The number does not capture a person's muscle mass; where on their body fat is stored; or how their race, ethnicity and ...

The way the world defines obesity has been in need of an overhaul, according to some experts, and it could be coming soon ...

A commission proposed a new definition of obesity focused on how excess fat affects the body, rather than assessing body mass ...

The commission recommends a shift away from relying solely on BMI to more accurately define obesity as a disease.

However, when it comes to diagnosing obesity, BMI can be a somewhat blunt, imprecise instrument. It doesn’t distinguish between fat, muscle, and bone mass, which can influence a person’s weight.

Part of the issue is the current definition of BMI, with a value of over 30 indicating obesity among people of European descent. Country-specific cutoffs help account for how obesity risk changes ...

A group of global experts is proposing a new way to define and diagnose obesity, reducing the emphasis on the controversial body mass index and hoping to better identify people who need treatment ...

They say that doctors should look at the overall health of a patient when diagnosing obesity, not just rely on this one flawed metric. BMI is calculated by measuring a person's mass in kilograms ...

The body mass index (BMI) , a measure that dates back to 1832, is not a reliable measure of health or illness and needs to be used along with waist circumference and direct fat measurement to ...