Another piece in the January SciAm that I have been reading was about measuring health risks.

Quote from SciAm: “A recent study showed just how imprecise BMI can be. Yftach Gepner, a physiologist and epidemiologist at Tel Aviv University, and his colleagues looked at data on about 3,000 Israeli men and women. Roughlty one third of those whoe BMI placed the in the normal range were found to be obese when their actual body fat was measured. And a third of those who were identified as overweight by their BMI had normal amounts of body fat. “If you are combining the misclassification on both sides,” Gepner says using BMI to determine obesity “is like flipping a coin”.”

The actual published research is here:

“The paradox of obesity with normal weight; a cross-sectional study”

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2023.1173488/full

Those % are higher than I’d‘ve guessed

BMI is wonderful – it’s the one body measurement that is easy to measure and practically impossible to cheat on.

On the other hand. Fat content, is much easier to cheat on. All the other measurements are easier to cheat on.

(Warning, devil’s advocate below)
You know how BMI works, don’t you. Higher BMI correlates with higher age. And higher age is a major risk factor for death.

dv said:

Those % are higher than I’d‘ve guessed

Yes, rather surprising really. Another correlation is not causation problem?