Laut einer neuen Studie kann der BMI bei Verwendung mehr schaden als nützen. Es kann nicht zwischen Muskeln und Fett unterscheiden, berücksichtigt nicht, wo das Fett im Körper verteilt ist, und lässt Faktoren wie Alter, Geschlecht und Rasse außer Acht. Zwei Menschen können den gleichen BMI haben, aber völlig unterschiedliche Gesundheitsprofile haben.

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1740144525000750

From the linked article:

For decades, BMI — a simple ratio of weight to height — has been treated as a gold standard in public health and medical practice. It influences everything from fitness apps to clinical decisions about surgery eligibility and pain management. But **according to a new Waterloo-led study, BMI tells only a fraction of the story about a person’s health and does more harm than good when used.**

“It is becoming more well-known that BMI doesn’t measure what many people think it does,” said Dr. Aly Bailey, the lead author of the study and a professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at Waterloo. “**It cannot distinguish between muscle and fat, doesn’t account for where fat is distributed in the body and overlooks important factors such as age, sex and race. Two people can share the same BMI but have completely different health profiles**.”

The researchers warn that BMI’s limitations have real-world consequences. It can influence access to medical care, reinforce harmful stereotypes about “normal” bodies, and contribute to stigma — particularly for people in racialized, disabled, older, or larger bodies.

From the paper:

„1.1. About the authors

We are all white settler scholars living on the Northern part of what many Indigenous Peoples call Turtle Island (or so-called “Canada”). With scrupulous care and in response to the violent history of our unearned privilege(s), it is our job and responsibility to push for anti-racist and anti-oppressive discourse, scholarship, and praxis which we offer in this critical dialogue on the use of BMI.“

One day BMI will be looked at the same way we look at the 4 humors

A study wasn’t needed to determine this.

3 minutes of thinking and an IQ over 12 were all that was necessary.

Literally all things that doctors know about it when they’re incorporating it into their survey of the person they’re looking at in front of them…

The only reason we do this much research on BMI is because people that it is accurate for don’t want it to be.

We actually evolved to tell if someone is metabolically healthy with our eyes no equipment needed