BMI metric has caused "historical harm," American Medical Association says

 Axios - The body mass index metric has caused "historical harm," including racist exclusion, according to a new report by the American Medical Association Council on Science and Public Health. Why it matters: Doctors have long relied on BMI to measure obesity, but it is an imperfect measurement that does not directly assess body fat, the nation's largest medical association said this week. Driving the news: BMI is measured by dividing a person's weight in kilograms or pounds by the square of height in meters or feet.

Cutoffs for BMI, which range from underweight to obese, were created based on data collected from non-Hispanic white populations and do not take into account gender or ethnicity, according to the report. Body fat "does not account for differences across race/ethnic groups, sexes, genders, and age-span," the AMA said. At the same BMI, women tend to have more body fat than men, and older people have more body fat than younger adults, per the CDC.