According to a new study millions of perfectly healthy Americans are being mislabeled as either overweight or obese. Researchers from UCLA and UC Santa Barbara
argue that calculating someone’s BMI—body mass index, a measurement of body fat based on height and weight—is ineffective.
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The BMI index chart is a crude indicator of one’s health because it only takes into account your height and weight. If you have a BMI of 25-29.9, you’re considered overweight; 30-34.9, you’re obese; and 35 or higher and you’re very obese. So for instance, of you’re six-feet tall and weigh more than 184 lbs., you would—at the very least—be considered overweight.
BMI doesn’t take into account lifestyle factors; and the researchers make the strong argument that being active and eating nutritious food (among other factors) are far better indicators of health than just BMI.
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According to the co-author of the paper, Jeffrey Hunger:
We need to move away from trying to find a single metric on which to penalize or incentivize people and instead focus on finding effective ways to improve behaviors known to have positive outcomes over time. The closer we can get to actual markers of health, the better. This includes clinical indicators like those used in our study, such as blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, as well as behaviors that we know are important for long-term health like eating well, staying active, and getting enough sleep.
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Curated articles from:
Nature
National Institutes of Health
Yahoo! Health