BMI 'Badly Flawed'

Not only is there prejudice, but economic considerations as well. The powers that be do not want to lose the billions in profit from the false demonization of obesity. When these studies come out, they don't think about our health first, they think of the bottom line of their shareholders and spin the article in a way that meets THEIR needs, not ours!

I would have to say that the idea of BMI is not a bad idea, but BMI used as the main form to indicate health is. The idea to use a standard system in which to indicate health is a good useful idea, but with that said basing it on other indicators like blood pressure, bodily function and cholesterol seems like a better idea. I think the items tested for level of health needs to be broader than just weight compaired to height. Oh and Paul, I love my button...i will send you a picture this weekend.

Before the BMI, there was a chart that showed a range of healthful weights, depending on bone type. You measured your wrist and that told you if you had small bones or whatever. Shoe width is also a good indicator -- my mother, with her AAA shoe has smaller bones than I do, with my EE. It also showed a higher range of weights than the current BMI does. I don't think that was the be all and end all, as amanda8501 says, blood pressure and cholesterol are a better idea. However, the fact that the weight which was considered to be "overweight" was lowered at the same time there stopped being a range that allowed for body type shows, to me at least, that the goal was to push more people into dieting.

On the news, they made the comment, "Because BMI doesn't differentiate between muscle mass and fat!" well, duh. I mean, duh. It's a WEIGHT based measure. If you wore 80 pounds of mascara when they weighed you, your BMI wouldn't differentiate between your body weight and your mascara. Why can't they use blood pressure, blood chemistry, ability to function, etc. as measures? I mean, I weigh 200 lbs.+ but all of my body functions are well within the healthy range - and I can outwork, outhike, outcarry-heavy-stuff compared to people thinner than me. But to hear some doctors and people in the diet industry talk, I should be totally disabled, on a respirator, unable to leave my home... also, a lot of those old charts were flawed; a lot of them were made by people from the insurance industry who didn't know much about medicine. I never saw the ones allowing a wider range; I always got showed the insurance-industry one that claimed that at 5' 7" I "should" weigh like 135 lbs. Yeah. Sure. And I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. And, one thing I'd like to know: why do NONE of these "OMG everyone is so OBESE!!!" studies ever mention the fact that a couple years ago, they "defined down" the lower limit of "obese" so that overnight, people "became" overweight or obese....that fact seems to have gone down the memory hole and it always p*sses me off...

I'm with you, Paul, in that it is a start, but this article had a lot of problems nonetheless. I'm disappointed that it didn't at least mention the history of the BMI, which I understand had its origins in the Victorian era (not BMI per se, but the underlying idea of it)and was in part tied to the idea that deviants/criminals/undesirables could be identified by their physical characteristics. Reuters could've also at least mentioned that BMI rates keep getting ratcheted down, possibly at the urging of the insurance lobby, and that this ratcheting accounts for quite a few of the Americans who are now deemed "obese." I am also, like Paul, absolutely stunned that they keep trotting out the 300,000 figure when the CDC itself admitted the numbers were wrong. There wasn't much publicity about it, I suppose, but this sort of error is what I expect of Wikipedia, not Reuters.

Because BMI doesn't differentiate between muscle mass and fat! When I read this statement I always wonder ... is there good evidence that having lots of fat is worse than having lots of muscle? Anybody know?

Well, muscle is good, because having good muscle tone can help protect you from falls and generally becoming "frail" (a lot of the elderly who fall? They've lost muscle tone). And it means you're pretty strong - I think a lot of my stamina and ability-to-work is that I'm from "peasant stock" with a tendency to build muscle. As for fat, well, SOME is necessary, because of insulation and such. I'm not convinced by the people who claim that any fat over and above the bare minimum is a "health risk"....seems that I know/knew an awful lot of chubby people who seemed in fine health. And another form of insulation - a good friend of my who is fat fell off a ladder. She broke no bones, partly because of the "insulation" but also because her *bone density was higher than that of her thinner sisters* But - the big thing about BMI is that it ranked some elite athletes as "obese" - put them in the category that's claimed to be unhealthy. So, IMHO, either BMI is a bad measure, or the idea that obese=unhealthy is a flawed assumption, or, most likely, both. In other words, it could take some person who was at the top of their training-game, who could probably run a marathon if they had to, and say they were *exactly the same as* another person of similar height and weight who never exercised, ate unhealthily, smoked, whatever. (Not that I'm implying we should nanny-state people who choose a different way of living...as long as you're not smoking in my personal airspace, I don't give two hoots whether or not you smoke, and I also ask that you respect my dislike of broccoli and don't constantly hound me to eat it because it's "healthy.") Again, I'd like to see some kind of blood pressure/blood chemistry/functionality index.

muscle is good Yes, yes. Being fit increases the range of activities that you can do, and so on and so forth. What I was asking was more along the lins of: What are the metabolic demands of a pound of muscle relative to a pound of fat? These research papers tend to make blanket statements, I find, of the form "Tons and tons of muscle is really good for you! But obviously fat is bad." I am open to the idea that excess muscle is not demanding to your body, because I have not looked into the research. However, I disagree that it is an obvious statement. Are bodybuilders healthier are less healthy than equally fit non-bodybuilders? I don't know.

I remember hearing about a study a few years ago that seemed to indicate that being heavy and having a higher fat percentage was correlated with lower incidence of heart disease than being heavy and having more muscle. I remember, because I was surprised by it. It seemed counter-intuitive to me. On the other hand, fat cells are lower maintenance than muscle cells, aren't they? It would be kind of amusing if being fat turned out to be healthier than being big and muscular. It would really mess with the health moralists' heads. Of course, the issue of functionality is a very real one. I think that if you're heavy, increasing your muscle percentage tends to improve your quality of life. I'll look around for that study.

DeeLiegh, is this what you were talking about http://www.theheart.org/article/732559.do?

No, the one I'm thinking of (if I remember correctly) looked at muscle percentage and BMI, but the results were the opposite of what one might expect. The big jocks had more heart disease than the fat people. But, I need to look for it. It's kind of a dim memory. I'm sure that it must have been back in the 90's.