Findings in a recent research suggest that with cases of obesity showing a sharp rise in case of adults and even now in case of young adults and children, Body Mass Index has been termed to be failing to judge whether a person a obese or not.

BMI takes into consideration ratio of a person’s weight in kilograms to square of their height in meters. However, the technique fails to administer specific areas where children carry maximum weight.

However, this recent UK-based study carried out by a team of researchers from Leeds Metropolitan University, measured obesity using different techniques, including BMI, waist circumference (WC), or waist-to-height ratio
(WtHR).

The study carried out for three years, examined about 15,000 children aged between 11 and 12 years.

Using BMI, the researchers subjected that 19-20% of the boys were overweight and 16-185 of girls were obese, in comparison to 20-26% boys and 28-36% girls estimated to be obese after using WC and WtHR techniques.

Findings of the study demonstrate different levels of child obesity, when they were measured using different techniques.

However, researchers claimed: “It is not possible to conclude from this study which is the best measure of obesity to use in children, as different measurements did not relate to the chance of experiencing ill health”.