Two of my students and I just published a paper on the utility of body mass index (BMI) as an indicator of health.  There have been several critiques of BMI lately in the popular press that have suggested that alternative measures of body size are much better at predicting health status.  We decided to take a look at this and compared BMI to several alternative measures of body size as predictors of cholesterol, blood pressure and fasting glucose. We found that none of the alternative measures were consistently better than BMI.  So despite the recent criticism, it appears that BMI is a measure that we should be taken seriously as an indicator of obesity and obesity related health risks.

Steve Mooney wrote a nice companion piece for the 2×2 health blog and the article was featured in the NY Times Science Times