Professor Brendon Noble, Director of the Institute for Healthy Urban Living and Professor in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Westminster, and Sports Science Technician Leah Siegel, spoke to BBC’s CrowdScience on how effective the Body Measure Index (BMI) can be when investigating overall health and invited the BBC to try out Westminster’s BMI alternative the Bod Pod.
BMI is a measure which takes a person’s height and weight and uses it to work out if they are a healthy weight. The radio segment highlights the positives and negatives of using this method as a measure of health. On one side they explain it is an efficient way to give a universal scale for people to follow. On the other, they suggest that it may be too rigid and label people as overweight even if they are healthy.
Professor Noble said: “BMI is very useful across the population but BMI is based on height and weight, and muscle is very much heavier than fat, so if you have a lot of muscle this is going to skew things.”
Siegel goes on to explain why people want to measure their health in this way. She said: “Looking at body composition, people do it for a lot of different reasons – maybe from a health perspective, maybe from a performance perspective if they take part in sport or athletics.”
As an alternative they explain how the Bod Pod can provide a much deeper reading on someone’s health than BMI, as it takes into consideration factors such as muscle and ethnicity.
The work being carried out by Professor Noble, Ozoda Saidhodjayeva and Siegal in the Institute’s Clinic at University of Westminster contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3: Good Health and Wellbeing. Since 2019, the University of Westminster has used the SDGs holistically to frame strategic decisions to help students and colleagues fulfil their potential and contribute to a more sustainable, equitable and healthier society.
Listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.
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