The 'Body Roundness Index' Is Touted As The New BMI — And It's Got A Big Problem

ICYMI, determining someone’s health by checking their body mass index is … well, not it.

For decades, BMI was used as a major indicator of one’s health. But recently, the American Medical Association decided to adopt a new policy on BMI because it doesn’t account for differences across race, gender, age and other demographics. Further, BMI doesn’t differentiate between fat and muscle mass — it just suggests that a person weighing over a certain amount is unhealthy.

Researchers have recently looked at not only weight and height, as BMI does, but also waist circumference and hip circumference. Those numbers are then used to estimate the risk of disease and mortality. This measure is called the “body roundness index,” or BRI.

Though a 2024 study in JAMA Network Open suggested that BRI was superior to BMI, a number of health care providers believe it’s still flawed.

“Even with these two additional data points, BRI is extremely oversimplified,” said Christine Byrne, a registered dietitian in Raleigh, North Carolina. In a previous article for HuffPost, she wrote about BMI’s racist roots and scientific inaccuracies — problems that critics in the medical community also see with BRI.

To put it even more bluntly: “Can we just stop measuring people’s bodies, please?” asked Dr. Jennifer Gaudiani, the founder and medical director of the Gaudiani Clinic in Colorado. “It’s a lazy way of not asking them questions about their actual lived experience and measuring health markers directly. It distracts us into a belief of individual responsibility and willpower, when we must be looking at systems.”

“In the same light [as BMI], the BRI has the potential to be harmful, as it can also lead to discriminatory interventions among diverse