this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (16 children)

To study this, Anderson and her team looked at the most recent self-reported body mass index (BMI) data from 746,250 Canadians who were 18 years or older between 2009 and 2023.

Maybe because BMI was never intended to be an indicator of health and is just a simple and dirty math formula invented by a Belgian astronomer 200 years ago?

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/publications/health-matters/is-bmi-accurate

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-02/the-problem-with-the-body-mass-index-bmi/100728416

BMI is just weight and height, a pound of muscle, a pound of fat, a pound of bone...

Doesn't matter, a pound is a pound.

I failed BMI everytime I got measured in the military, they had to "rope and choke" which is a more time consuming method where waist/neck measurements were used. If I had still failed that, I'd have been given a buoyancy test as well for an even more accurate tests.

But it's hard to call someone obese after you just measured the circumference of their abs...

When used as an average of a population BMI isbetter but it was made based on what weights were considered healthy for a white man 200 years ago, way before protein and weight training. And when the average person was like 5'6.

Lots of clearly healthy white men are labeled obese because of that. And no one else was even involved in coming up with the system, so they've always been getting wrong results.

It's fucking insane we're still using this ancient flawed method when we have so many better ways. Especially since the largest determiner of height back then was access to enough calories when young. Pretty much everyone is getting that now. And reaching their max height which is where BMI has always been the most flawed.

Like, obesity is an undeniable problem. But BMI is the least scientific metric we could be using short of some bullshit like astrology signs. The obesity epidemic too serious to fuck around like this

[–] CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 weeks ago

yea, as a 6'5" 210lb guy, i hate BMI.

I have a bit of extra padding, but can run a 6 minute mile, and i have a 'normal' amount of body fat, with plenty of muscle... but since muscle is heavy, im in the overweight category according to BMI.

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