Something about weight in schoolchildren

Child body mass index, and about the childrens BMI charts in this article

This is a review of an article about child body mass index, which showed some rather useful charts, plotting the 85th percentile’s of children’s BMI, from six different nationalities.

6 nations kids overweight BMI

That chart is impossible to read.

And in the chart below, the blue line (boys) and pink line (girls) shows how the CDC’s 85th percentile line of Body Mass Index (overweight threshold) compares to the above data.

How CDC's overweight thresholds compare

Thanks for the pink and blue lines, but what are they?

They define the “Overweight” cutoff of Body mass index.

So, I could find the child’s age on the bottom, and figure out the BMI cutoff, except that it’s too small.

There was also an interesting chart showing the percentiles of body fat in children. Particularly interesting is the dip in body fat that occurs during puberty in boys.

child body mass index and body fat percent

Hey, if boys body fat has that big rise then big dip, why isn’t that showing anything on the BMI chart?

Clever question, Hector. Must be that muscle and bone growth are balancing the fat loss.

I’m interested in body fat percentages. Looks like girls have average of 20 percent body fat at age 18.

A link to a fairly new and good CDC calculator of BMI percentile of children.

I added this link to the CDC BMI percentile calculator, in 2014. They are getting better at making calculators, so now I’m happy to link to them.