Title of article:

Body Mass Index, Percent body fat and normal weight obesity

Authors: Ohno M, Nishisaka S, Ikeda Y.
Journal: Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 1998: 22: suppl 3, August.

Abstract

Objective: Recently, a new bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) instrument which does not require attachment of electrodes on the subject's body was developed. Subject simply stands on this device that combines a standard scale with stainless steel foot pads which serve as electrodes to measure total body impedance.
Design: Using this new BIA device, we investigated the relationship between percent body fat (%BF) and body mass index (BMI) of Japanese adults (M:F=1624:451,Age 46+-10 yrs.).
Results: Percent BF was 20.4+-4.6% for men and 24.2+-5.3% for women. BMI was 23.0+-2.7 kg/m2 for men and 21.5+-2.8 kg/m2 for women. There was a significant correlation between %BF and BMI (r=0.71,p<0.001). However, %BF of 157/329 (47.7%) of men with BMI over 25 was within the normal range and %BF of 59/151 (39.1%) of women with BMI below 30 was also within the normal range. On the other hand %BF exceeds 25% in 78/1071 (7.3%) of men with BMI 20-25 and in the female whose BMI 20-25, %BF exceeds 40% in 19 (7.6%) subjects among 251 and they were considered to be the normal weight obesity. Therefore, it is important to measure not only BMI but %BF to evaluate obesity in the population study.

Comments and Key points

This abstract is not indexed in PubMed but it was reproduced on the Tanita Corporation website1. I also reproduce it here because of it's interesting data.

It found that, in Japanese men with a BMI above the overweight threshold of 25 kg/m2, that 47% of those men were not actually "overweight" based on their amounts of body fat.

The study itself isn't particularly scientific however. It didn't compare the BMI machine to another reference standard. It didn't acknowledge that Asians probably need different BMI thresholds than caucasians.

But it does provide an illustration of a Tanita body fat monitor scale being used in a scientific research study. There are others.

 

References

  1. http://www.tanita.com/professional/abstracts/abstract_main.html

Review & comments by Steven B. Halls, MD, Last edited 26-May-2008 Copyright.

Keep the search going... at the index of body fat scale references.

weight facts