New research points to a better way to measure obesity than body mass index. Body mass index was first developed in 1832 and has been the standard way to estimate a person’s body fat since the 1980s.

The body mass index has long been slammed as a blunt instrument for evaluating health, even more so with new obesity drugs changing the conversation about weight and well-being. Now a study reasserts ...

The body mass index, or BMI, predates the bathroom scale by more than half a century. But it has not changed with the times. The BMI was created in the 1830s before calculators and computers existed.

In July 1998, the National Institutes of Health changed what it means to be overweight, defining it as a body mass index of 25 or greater for adults. The cutoff had been 28 for men and 27 for women, ...