BMI Not An Accurate Obesity Measurement

The following is an excerpt from a forthcoming article in British Journal of Nutrition claims certain ethnic groups may not be getting accurate estimates of disease risk.

BMI is a formula that estimates a person’s body fat using only his/her weight and height. The result is then used to determine weight categories: 18.5 and below is considered underweight; 18.6 - 24.9 healthy; 25 - 29 overweight and 30+ obese.

In the current study, rather than using other potentially biased methods employed in the past as "gold standards" to examine body composition, researchers used dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, which is a low dose x-ray known as DXA, to determine percent fat. DXA can be used to estimate bone density, lean mass and fat mass.

Since BMI is assumed to represent body fatness, an African American woman would not be considered overweight or obese until she reached a higher number than what is indicated by the current BMI standards. The opposite is the case for Hispanic, Asian and Asian-Indian woman. Their percent fat is higher by 1.65 percent, 2.65 percent and 5.98 percent, respectively. So they would be considered overweight or obese at amounts lower than what the BMI standards indicates. The results for men were similar.

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