How Did the BMI Get Developed?
BMI, or body mass index, is one of the standard tools for estimating body fat. It's primarily used as an assessment tool in determining an individual's healthy weight range, and it has a history of over 100 years.
Other People Are Reading
-
The Quetelet Index
-
The first version of the BMI was known as the Quetelet Index. Developed by Belgian scientist Adolphe Quetelet in 1832, the Quetelet Index was based on Quetelet's observation that adults' normal body weight in kilograms is proportional to the square of their height in meters. Quetelet didn't develop his scale out of an interest in obesity, however, but in defining the characteristics of the average man and fitting the distribution around the norm.
Modern Adoption
-
As obesity became more prevalent in the 20th century, health experts became interested in Quetelet's Index. In 1972, Ancel Keys did a comparative study of weight and obesity indexes and confirmed the validity of the Quetelet Index. He renamed it the body mass index. Initially, use of the BMI was intended only for epidemiologists, but after Keys's study was published, the BMI became a popular health assessment tool among doctors to measure their patients' body composition.
-
Concerns about BMI
-
The BMI's critics argue that it fails to distinguish between lean and fatty mass, classifying anyone with a lot of muscle as overweight or even obese. In fact, Keys specifically warned against using the BMI as a diagnostic tool for patients, because the equation it's based on ignores variables such as patients' gender or age. Further, the data the BMI relies on were drawn from a limited and primarily Anglo-Saxon population, so its results may not apply to everyone.
-
References
- Photo Credit scale image by jedphoto from Fotolia.com
