Clinicians have debated for years whether body mass index (BMI) ' a metric derived from a person's height and weight ' is the best way to define and diagnose obesity. Now, an approach that measures waist circumference and focuses more closely on excess body fat has proved to be better than BMI at predicting a person's risk of death. An analysis of data collected from more than 800,000 individuals found that using BMI to diagnose obesity failed to identify a considerable proportion of people with elevated health risks caused by excess body fat. The study was published today in Nature1. Physicians know that BMI ' calculated by dividing a person's weight by the square of their height ' doesn't accurately reflect body composition. For example, a muscular person might have an elevated BMI but have little body fat. The latest study 'reinforces that BMI is not a good measure of obesity at the individual level and is not good in terms of predicting who is going to develop cardiometabolic...
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