{"id":5326,"date":"2024-05-29T05:35:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T05:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itsmooh.com\/?p=5326"},"modified":"2024-05-29T13:12:00","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T13:12:00","slug":"wellness-is-bmi-outdated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itsmooh.com\/wellness-is-bmi-outdated\/","title":{"rendered":"How BMI Is Outdated, and Why You Shouldn’t Worry About It"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Most of us have heard the term\u00a0body mass index<\/a>\u00a0(BMI) before. (After all, it is a standard health assessment tool that\u2019s often used in healthcare facilities.) And for decades, BMI has used body size to measure people\u2019s overall health. However, it\u2019s recently faced some backlash for oversimplifying the meaning of health. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, is BMI outdated? Many health experts tend to think so. In today\u2019s article, we\u2019ll illuminate everything you need to know about BMI, its history, and why it\u2019s not (spoiler alert) an accurate picture of health.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What Is BMI?\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The BMI scale was\u00a0developed in 1832<\/a>\u00a0by a Belgian mathematician named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. Essentially, he designed it to quickly estimate the degree of obesity in a population, as the government needed to know how to allocate health resources. But because it only provides a snapshot of a population\u2019s overall health, Quetelet said himself that it would be an inaccurate way of assessing individual health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BMI is calculated by dividing a person\u2019s weight by their height. There are different formulas depending on the various measurement systems: <\/p>\n\n\n\n