Is BMI a scam? More than a few experts say yes
BMI can label a huge swath of our population as somehow aberrant because of their weight, even if they’re perfectly healthy. istockphoto
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There are few single measures in health care that seem to carry as much weight as body mass index, or BMI. We encounter it not just at doctor’s offices, but with online calculators and smart scales, at gyms and even when determining eligibility for the COVID vaccine.
Its formula is simple: Take your weight (in kilograms), and divide by the square of your height (in meters). The result, which slots you into one of four main categories, is meant to describe your body in a single word or two: underweight (BMI less than 18.5), normal weight (18.5 to 24.9), overweight (25.0 to 29.9) or obese (30 or greater).
“We think labeling the emotion will cause us to focus on it and accentuate it,” said Matt Lieberman, professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of the book “Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect.” “In reality, labeling the emotion tends to dampen it a bit so we move on to other things.”
BMI can “label a huge swath of our population as somehow aberrant because of their weight, even if they’re perfectly healthy,” said A. Janet Tomiyama, lead author of the study and an associate professor of health psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
How to Stop Emotional Eating and Cut Down on Binges aarp.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from aarp.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.