Bollocks Mass Index

The thing that annoys me whenever you see any study talking about how obesity is on the rise or how we should all lose weight so that we won't die of cancer is that we measure obesity levels using the Body Mass Indicator (BMI).

It was pointed out that the entire 2007 England Rugby World Cup squad is obese according to BMI and yet still reports insist on using them.

If imperical evidence isn't enough to suggest it then perhaps good old fashioned maths & physics will do:

Consider two men Mr A who is 5'0" and Mr B who is 6'0".
According to BMI, Mr A can weigh just over 9 stone before he is considered overweight and Mr B can weigh just over 13 stone before he is considered overweight.
This allows a 44% increase in weight for Mr B over Mr A.

Suppose Mr A and Mr B are cuboids.
If Mr A has a width of 10" and a depth of 7" compared with respective measurements of 12" and 8.5" for Mr B then the difference in each of the individual dimensions would be roughly 20%.

However the difference in volume would be approximately 75%. So unless Mr A has almost double the density of Mr B, I would deduce that BMI is a sack of shit.

Incidentally I'm 6'5", most BMI charts don't even go up to my height and they certainly don't appreciate the increase in variance of volume as height increases.

I will admit that I'm currently overweight, probably obese too (I'm on a diet though). However it doesn't help that in order for me to reach my ideal weight I'd have to be the same weight as Greg Rusedski was when he was still competing in Wimbledon. (And he's 2" shorter than me). I have a larger build than Greg Rusedski.

The only reliable measurement of whether or not you are overweight is body fat analysis. Everything else is horseshit.

I suppose I should make a comment about all this cancer avoidance crap in the news. You can live as healthily/boringly as you want, you'll still die.