I’ll be very interested to hear from medical professionals which of those listed alternatives are “perfect” indicators. Since being imperfect and requiring some professional judgment is apparently a terrible thing.
I use an InBody machine that measures my fat and muscle percentages. It’s not perfect but it gets pretty good ratings. I have way too much fat, ha, but I’m working on it.
Hydrostatic testing and DEXA are way more accurate but BMI is easy to do. The problem is it isn’t accurate for people with high muscle mass.
Yes, although they require special equipment and are not easily measured at home, so frequency of being able to do them is lower.
BMI as an individual assessment can also be an inaccurate indicator of those with low muscle mass. BMI is best limited to large population studies where those with high and low muscle mass cancel out.
For an easy individual assessment that can be done at home without special equipment, waist / height is likely better than BMI (the simple recommendation is to keep your waist circumference less than half your height).
Electrical impedance measurements are not that accurate for absolute measurement, confound bone and fat, and have some day to day jitter, but can help indicate medium to longer term trends. Pinch calipers measure mostly subcutaneous body fat rather than the more health-risky visceral fat.
I get DEXAs two or three times a year as part of my exercise classes. Unless you are really into some kind of competitive fitness you don’t need a DXA more often. It’s amazing how much work it takes to make a signification difference in body composition.
ETA: I have a friend who has lost a lot of weight via one of those eating programs where you buy this company’s food. They measured her body fat as part of the paid services. She posted that she was down to 12% body fat. As someone who also has lost a lot of weight and probably is comparable in size to her, I can assure you she is NOT at 12% body fat. Buyer beware out there.
Also, the healthy percent of body fat for a woman is 21%-32%. An young athlete may go down lower, but not by much. It is unhealthy for a woman to have 12% body fat. For a man it’s 8%-19%. Older than around 60% should up those number to by a few percentage points for both gender presentations.
After a career in primary care, I did not even bother reading the article. As an MD, i can assure you that yet another convoluted method of calculating an index is not needed. In fact, BMI was never needed, and never made any difference. For kids, until puberty hits, weight percentile vs height percentile works great. After puberty hits, especially for females, adult weight ranges for height work fine. The issue is not the measurement method, it is that more and more of our population is becoming overweight and obese. No one wants to hear it, no one wants to do anything about it for themselves or their kids. We do not need another measurement technique.
We need to stop subsidizing corn, soy beans, and wheat and start subsidizing fruits and vegetables. Without the farm subsidies, unhealthy foods would become much more expensive. We need to reform SNAP to look like WIC, which pays for only certain healthy foods and only in certain amounts. This would also solve the problem of SNAP benefits being sold for pennies on the dollar to buy drugs and alcohol. Vigorous phys ed class every day in schools. Subsidized social exercise classes in every community center.
Maybe she meant she had lost 12 % of body fat. 
The Maintenance Phase podcast had a great, illuminating episode re: the racist history and inaccurate, inapplicable nature of the BMI:
This 1000x
I agree with subsidizing fruits and vegetables, but the other still needs to be subsidized. Low income people don’t need their prices to increase so the better off have cheaper fruits and vegetables. I don’t need to go into food deserts in poor areas to know they don’t provide fresh food.
Farm subsidies are basically run by lobbyists. I have been reading about this for years, and how it is has harmed school lunches and the food on your grocery shelf
https://perc.tamu.edu/PERC-Blog/PERC-Blog/U-S-Farm-Subsidies-A-Prime-Example-of-Crony-Capita
Corn goes to high fructose corn syrup, into cheap sweet stuff. Soy goes to oil for frying snack foods. Both feed and fatten cheap pork.
Take a look at video of Americans, white and black, in the 60s. No obesity. Cookies, chips, soda, ice cream, were all relatively expensive back then. Most households cooked because it was cheap. Fast food hadnt yet becone the daily diet.
As for food deserts, they are the unfortunate result of supermarkets choosing not to deal with the high level of shoplifting in high crime areas. Small inner city groceries would stock fruits and veggies if there were a market for them, but there isnt much demand for them there plus they dont have shelf life.
All these things are true about the plethora of crap food, and the food deserts, but the bigger global problem is hunger, and to solve that, you need these cheap products. It’s not just about us…
Last Sunday I learned at a Bread for The World presentation that SNAP funding is part of the Farm Bill. If anybody has a heart for those efforts, consider writing to your representatives about it. This link is sponsored by a religious organization, but it has some good general info.
Even in the 70’s and early 80’s. I see friends post old pics from high school on FB. Particularly beach/pool swimsuit pics. Most everyone was thin. I see pics of high school age girls now, and they are built like menopausal women. Thick in the middle for sure.
Yes that strikes me when I look back at high school photos. Hardly anyone was overweight. In 1974 my 7th grade gym teacher told me I should lose weight which kind of horrifies me now. I was not heavy.
My husband and I recently watched the Netflix Woodstock 99 documentary and we were both struck at how healthy all the young people looked. 1999 wasn’t that long ago.
Removed my comment 