Taking BMI off the table

Four year-olds in New Zealand are offered a B4 School Check, during which they have their BMI percentile calculated and BMI category flagged-essentially diagnosing children as underweight, healthy weight, overweight or obese. The obese child is then referred onwards for treatment. It is assumed that parents need to be told which BMI category their child falls into so those with a child in the overweight or obese categories will be motivated to make healthy lifestyle changes. There are two fundamental problems with this: BMI is flawed A targeted approach like this is potentially harmful In this paper, the current limitations of using BMI categories to essentially diagnose obesity are examined, recent research is discussed which calls into question the very idea of telling parents their child is obese, and an inclusive, universal approach is proposed instead.