Now the truth is coming out.

Comments about body mass index and body fat in older women

This article is about obesity definitions. The article thinks that a BMI of 30.0 is too high, for defining "obese" in older women over 60 years old.

When I made this article review in year 2000, I was pretty calm, even though I knew they were publishing crap.

How do you feel now?

While re-doing the styling of this page in 2014, I found more definitive proof, about how wrong this article was. It’s added at the bottom.

This journal article thinks that a BMI of 25.5 is a better obesity threshold. It defines "true obesity" as having a body fat percentage over 35%. That’s a common definition, but it is arbitrary nevertheless.

Save your anger till the end.

The article showed a graph of the BMI and body fat percentages of the older women in the study. Notice that the great majority of these women have a body fat percentage over 35%.

body fat percentage in older women

Is it natural and normal, or is it problem and unhealthy that the majority of older women have a body fat percentage over 35%? No-one knows for sure.

I bet Dr. Halls knows for sure now.

For younger and middle-aged adults, a body fat percentage over 35% is definitely associated with higher risks of disease, but studies of older adults hasn’t been able to prove a significant extra risk.

In fact, older adults have a higher mortality rate² if they have a lower body mass index.

A different study¹, of adult women of all ages, showed that a BMI of 25.85 is the least-risky in terms of diseases related to being overweight or underweight.

The kind of study that concludes that the average person has one testicle and one breast.

So maybe it’s not such a good idea after all, to label the majority of older woman as obese, if their BMI is over 25.5, when might actually be reasonably healthy after all.

References

Allison D, Faith M, Heo M. Townsend-Butterworth D, Williamsom D. Meta-analysis of the effect of excluding early deaths on the estimated relationship between body mass index and mortality. Obes Res 1999; 7: 342-54.
Allison DB, Zhu SK, Plankey M, FaithMS, Heo M. Differential associations of body mass index and adiposity with all-cause mortality among men in the first and second National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES I and NHANES II) follow-up studies. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord, Mar 2002;26(3):410-6

OK, the old review is over. What’s the update, doc?

Now we have proof, in the recent publication I’m showing below. It proves that HEALTHY body mass index in people over age 50, is in the 25 to 30 range, and has the LONGEST SURVIVAL, so it’s NORMAL, not overweight and certainly not obese.

Update 2014. See this post about body mass index in the elderly for longest survival.