Body composition rather than BMI is the best indicator of obesity

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Cornell University researchers would prefer we focus on percentage fat rather than body weight when it comes to assessing obesity risk.
Body mass index (BMI) is a widely accepted way of figuring out if someone is obese. A BMI over 30 indicates obesity and 25-30 is overweight. But, say a team at Cornell University, this is misleading. For it is body fat, not weight, that poses the risk. BMI does not take account of this.

When they translated BMI data into body composition data, they found some fascinating trends. For instance, the gap in obesity rates between black and white women was cut in half. And white men were found to have higher obesity rates than black men. Body composition rather than BMI is the best indicator of obesity. The researchers, who reported to the National Bureau of Economic Research, have created a tool which can help look at existing BMI data from the point of view of body composiiton. Altready they have found a correlation between high percentage body fat and unemployment - an important link that wouldn't have been discovered through BMI data.

Source
Cornell University

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