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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]First of all, BMI was never intended as a measure of individual health. It was designed to work on populations, within which there will always be considerable variation.

Second, statistically, people in the "overweight" category on the BMI charts have a lower risk of mortality than those in the "normal" category.

Third, or maybe second', using BMI gets a lot of people tagged as unhealthy who aren't (they're just fat) and misses a lot of people who are unhealthy but are thin.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306129.php

Finally, pushing weight loss on people is more likely to result in disordered eating than just leaving them alone or teaching them to eat and exercise for health independent of weight. So even if you reject the fact that you can be fat and healthy, focusing on weight loss is counterproductive.[/quote]

+1 to all of this.

BMI is pretty useless as a measure of health.  Like PP, I'd rather the schools spend time teaching good eating and exercise habits, which are important regardless of weight.

I have one skinny DS who has a low/normal BMI but would lie around playing videogames and eating as much sugar as he possibly could if we didn't stay on him all the time about enforcing rules around healthy eating and activity.  I have one big/muscular DD who is constantly active, plays a sport with regular intense workouts, rarely eats sweets because her favorite thing to snack on is apples.  Her BMI would flag her as "overweight" or "unhealthy" when her pediatrician has told us, and our own observations of her activity and eating habits show us, that she is perfectly healthy.  At DD's last check up, DD made a comment about being heavier than her friends so the dr. spent a long time talking with her about all the factors that go into weight so that being heavier does not equal being "fat" and reviewed her growth charts with her to show that she's always grown consistently on the 95th percentile for both height and weight so that is normal for her.  DD seemed reassured by all that but I'm sure it will be a regularly reviewed topic because the tween/teen years can be harsh on a girl whose natural body type is larger than the average. [/quote]

And the obesity epidemic in children is not a real health problem, and they didn't change the name of adult-onset diabetes to Type 2 because of the numbers of children with it. [/quote]

Of course, childhood obesity is a real health problem. That doesn't mean that every child with a higher-than-average BMI is obese or even overwight, however.[/quote]

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