Leisure
Good News!
FACT - Coatbridge is NOT the fattest town - the media misread the information distributed by CACI and got their facts WRONG. It started with the Sunday Times and I assume all the others copied the incorrect story. The media read only one part of the facts and got it wrong. They all quote that CACI carried out some 16million interviews but in reality there was only 15,000 interviews throughout the UK!
Some notes on BMI - Body Mass Indicators
Advantages of BMI
BMI is generally considered the best way to determine if an individual is at a healthy weight. Using BMI is popular because it is simple, quick, effective and applies to adult men and women, as well as children. BMI is a useful tool for quickly assessing weight classification. While it does not directly measure body fat, it is more accurate at approximating degree of body fatness than weight alone. In addition, you do not have to be of an exact weight or measurement, to be considered 'normal.' There is a range within each classification to allow for different body types and shapes. For example, you can be 10 to 15 lbs. heavier than a same height counterpart and still fall within a normal weight range.
Disadvantages of BMI
BMI has limitations. Because it is not a measure of body fatness, very muscular individuals often fall into the overweight category when they are not overly fat. Additionally, BMI may place individuals who have lost muscle into the healthy weight category. Measuring BMI for very short people or pregnant women is not appropriate. It is believed that excessive abdominal fat is more health threatening than hip or thigh fat.
These numbers vary so much because the calculation uses weight only and does not account for levels of body fat. BMI, therefore, can miss out how lean, or muscular or powerful someone may be.
BMI can be inaccurate, for example with large and muscular though lean athletes scoring high BMI levels which incorrectly rates them as obese.