MEASURING a person’s body mass index (BMI) isn’t “accurate or sensible”, according to public health professionals in Worcestershire.

The county’s director of public health says she’d like to scrap the measure and would stop the weighing of children in schools.

BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight.

At a health scrutiny committee meeting on Tuesday (November 12), Councillor Kit Taylor questioned the medical profession’s “obsession” with BMI.

“Why is it still used?” he asked, “it means absolutely nothing.”

Lisa McNally,  director of public health for Worcestershire, said: “You’re absolutely right, especially in relation to children.

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“We give grants to schools to hopefully get kids involved in sport and physical activity, and there are many stories of girls who have eaten well, and maybe involved themselves in a strength-based sport who would come out with a high BMI.

“Most professional rugby players would be classed as obese, even though for many of them there’s not a bit of fat on them.

“So BMI is not a great measure," said Dr McNally. "I’d get rid of it. I’d stop weighing and measuring kids, especially sending a letter home - I’d start thinking more about developing a positive relationship with food, education around healthy eating, not having the aim of being skinny, which is an unhealthy way of being.”

Public health consultant Liz Altay said while BMI “isn’t a very accurate or sensible measure”, the weighing and measuring programme shows that children are “much bigger than they used to be”.

Cllr Taylor said: “I’ve got daughters and they’re very fit - they’re county hockey players - but their BMI would show they are overweight.

“Now surely, if you say to a young girl just going into puberty ‘your BMI is high, ie. 'we are starting to label you as fat’, young girls are incredibly sensitive so the next thing they’re going into bulimia, they’re going into anorexia, they’re starving themselves because they want to look like whoever.

“You’re admitting that BMI isn’t particularly accurate, so why are you using it? I hate to use the word stupid, but if my daughters came back and said [they’d been told] ‘your BMI is X, Y and Z and you’re fat’ I’d have gone berserk.

“You are fat shaming someone and putting them into a box they probably don’t belong to and you get all the problems down the line.”