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Why BMI is flawed — and how to redefine obesity
(www.nature.com)
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You can use it after controlling for the variables that would otherwise skew it.
Comparing different sports with different muscle requirements, or different genders with different muscle development, would be a wrong use.
Comparing averages of samples of Japanese vs. Samoans, with the same ratio of males vs females, sporty vs non-sporty, and a similar age distribution, would be a viable comparison.
INB4 genetic differences between Japanese vs Samoans:
"Over the period of 1978-2013, in a population of approximately 200,000 Polynesian people, the prevalence of obesity increased from 27.7% to 53.1% in men (2.3% per five years) and 44.4% to 76.7% in women (4.5% per five years)"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9012561/
You should have kept reading about BMI.
This isn't about speculative genertc factors it's about medical boards arguing that the thresholds need to be set differently for these populations.
https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/obesity/diagnosis/identification-classification/
Similarly, new Zealand used to have higher thresholds for obesity for Maori and Polynesian (which includes Samoa), but because a range of issues including diabetes is such a problem for these populations they brought it back down. It still doesn't work reliably as a risk factor for a range of stuff.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-bmi-inconsistent-obesity-maori-pacific.html