Not exactly off topic but...

From what I've learned BMI can't be used to associate health risks on the individual scale, at least that's what this tell me.

My friend is fat. Now he's not terribly fat and he has muscle since he used to and did kickboxing for a long time. Either way hes a fat dude and his BMI says he's obese at 5'11" and 215lbs. I had a long argument with him about BMI and I lost when he gave me that article. It directly contradicted everything I thought about BMI.

The point I was trying to make was no human has an excuse to be out of the "normal" BMI range. Almost no human with the appropriate amount of body fat will fall out of the "normal" BMI range.

He used that article to prove that BMI has no correlation to health issues. That article specifically says that BMI does NOT have connection to CAD and early death unless you're morbidly obese.

Is this true? Can we really not associate health problems with BMI on the individual level? I said that you could, and at the very least it's an indicator of where you should be. He said that's not how statistics work and they don't need to be applicable on the individual scale and I should take a statistics class.

I just don't know what to think right now. The bottom line is he's fat and he's using this BMI thing to prove that he's not at increased health risk for anything... which may be true. I don't have evidence to say otherwise. I don't have anything to argue against that with because he's used the fact that BMI = high level population statistics to conclude BMI = ignorable and health issues related to BMI = ignorable.

I think that no matter how inapplicable to the individual if you fall in the obese category of BMI there are health risks associated with that weight and you should do something about it. AT THE VERY LEAST IT'S AN INDICATOR OF WHERE YOU WEIGHT SHOULD BE.

Am I actually wrong or is he just impossible to convince being fat is a problem because he's fat?