Thursday 22 September 2022 02:23 PM Is 'The Rock' as obese as a couch potato? Celebrity proof as to why BMI is ... trends now
Is Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson fat? You'd be forgiven for thinking not, but according to official weight calculators the Hollywood hunk is technically obese.
But the wrestler-cum-actor, famed for his chiseled physique, isn't the only superstar wrongly labelled by the Body Mass Index (BMI) formula.
Fellow Fast and Furious actor Vin Diesel is also considered too flabby, with a BMI of 30 — one shy of Dwayne.
Meanwhile, The Terminator himself, the legendary Arnold Schwarzenegger, sat dangerously close to the morbidly obese threshold at the peak of his physical fitness in the 1980s, with a whopping BMI of 33.
Experts say the celebrity examples are proof that it is time to finally ditch the hated go-to measurement, which is crudely calculated by dividing your weight by height.
Calls came to a head yesterday, as researchers said BMI should replaced with the lesser-known waist-to-hip ratio because it better predicts whether someone will die young.
Devised by a Belgian mathematician in the 1830s, doctors have now relied on BMI for almost two centuries.
It's used to categorise people as underweight (with a score below 18.5), healthy (18.5 to 24.9), overweight (25 to 29.9) or obese (30 or more).
But it has one major flaw, critics insist.
BMI is incapable of differentiating between fat distribution and muscle mass.
Realistically, it means a rugby player and cough potato of the exact same height and weight would share scores — even if the former has a ripped physique and the other carries a spare tyre.
Hollywood hunk or hulk? Muscular celebrities like Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Vin Diesel and Arnold Schwarzenegger are deemed obese under the Body Mass Index formula which is widely used by health authorities around the world. Some scientists are now arguing it should be replaced. Figures for Mr Schwarzenegger are from his 'peak' as a bodybuilder
Waist-to-hip ratio is one of the contenders touted to replace BMI. It is calculated by dividing the circumference of your waist by that of your hips. Women with a ratio of 0.85 or more and men with a score of 0.9 or greater are deemed to have high risk levels of visceral fat
Dr Arya Sharma, an obesity expert at the University of Alberta in Canada, told MailOnline the examples show how BMI measures how large someone is, not how obese.
'BMI is a measure of size, not health,' he said.
'Obesity is a medical diagnosis that should be based on the presence of health impairments resulting from excess body fat — it is not diagnosed simply by stepping on a scale.'
Ifran Khan, a medical student based at University College Cork who penned the latest paper calling for BMI to be ditched, said: 'It doesn't reliably predict risk of disease or mortality.'
Judging WHR can help people work out if they are carrying excess weight around their middle, Mr Khan and fellow experts said.
Studies have repeatedly shown this spare tyre, as it is colloquially known, can drive up the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The ratio is the circumference of your waist — usually just above your belly button — divided by that of your hips, or the widest part of your buttocks.
Women with a ratio above 0.85 and men 0.9 are deemed to be at higher risk of the knock-on effects of obesity.
Mr Khan said the celebrity examples demonstrated the flaws behind BMI.
'It exactly captures the main point of the study: regardless of your BMI, WHR remains consistent in its strength of predicting death,' he said.
'As seen by the photographs, even if they have an "obese” BMI, that doesn’t necessarily mean
