BMI Often Wrongly Labels People as Overweight or Obese, Italian Study Reveals
Italian research using DXA scans finds BMI wrongly flags many as overweight or obese compared to direct body fat measurement.
New research from Italy shows that the traditional World Health Organization body mass index (BMI) classification system frequently misidentifies people as having overweight or obesity when compared to the gold standard of dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) for measuring actual body fat. The study, to be presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2026) in Istanbul and published in the peer-reviewed journal Nutrients, indicates that in the general population, BMI leads to significant misclassification. This appears to be an observational study; specific sample size and conflicts of interest were not detailed in the source report. Source: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-03-bmi-classification-wrongly-people-overweight.html
VITALIS: For ordinary people this means the number on the scale or your BMI chart might be stressing you out for no good reason, pushing many toward unnecessary worry or diets when their actual body fat is in a healthier range.
Sources (1)
- [1]BMI classification system wrongly identifies some people as having overweight or obesity, says study(https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-03-bmi-classification-wrongly-people-overweight.html)