Bmi, when taken across populations, is a good metric. On the individual level not as much, but when your sample size is large the one in a thousand jacked individuals tend not to produce much noise.

You've got just enough knowledge to be skeptical, but haven't done enough research to actually understand what you're talking about.

I understand exactly how this all works and my point remains.

If you understood the limits of BMI as a metric you would know it's a good metric to compare body fat across populations, and we wouldn't be having this conversation. The limits if BMI as a metric are taught in any intro kinesiology course.

This knowledge is readily available and easily deduced from basic mathematics and reasoning, you don't need to take a course. At face value my assumption is valid as the graph was given at face value. Better data is needed to make an argument, that is my point.

I mean, I could take the word of somebody on the internet using "math and reasoning" or I could take the word of the experts in the field who actually use math and evidence to justify the use of the metric.

Like I said, do more research. You don't seem to understand how to interpret data on any level.

For the general population bmi is fine since most lead a sedentary lifestyle. That means a bmi that says someone is overweight is usually an accurate assessment. It would be very difficult to get an accurate bf measurement which is why they only use height and weight to check bmi.

This is understood


The only reason it is considered a good metric is because it's simple and cheap. It is not an accurate metric and posting an image of global BMI is insufficient data to answer "should we shame fat people?"

This post was edited by majorblood on May 2 2016 12:35am

Global bmi is a good metric for determining overweight populations. You bolded the part of my post you agreed with but didn't respond to the part which explained why bmi is accurate for an overall population.

It is the used metric because it is the most cost effective but not something to pay close attention to

And why do you think that?