Body Mass Index or BMI, is among the most common yet most condemned tools that evaluate people’s weight and health risks. BMI has always been under scrutiny for misclassifying people as being at high risk for obesity-related diseases without accounting for important factors like muscle weight.

Also, body scans give a full picture of a person’s body fat percentage, even though they can be expensive and hard to access. And that is why a new model, known as the Body Roundness Index or BRI, is gaining interest as being the most accurate way to find out obesity and related health risks.

BRI integrates waist and hip measurements and calculates how round a person’s midsection is relative to their height. According to studies, fat around the midsection is linked to a higher risk of health conditions, including heart attacks, diabetes, and even cancer.

Research says BRI is also a better and more accurate predictor of disease risk and death than BMI. However, according to experts, replacing BMI may be more challenging. The BRI scale ranges from one to 16, with higher scores indicating a rounder body shape.

The formula of BRI was developed by Dr. Diana Thomas, a professor of mathematics at West Point, and first introduced into the scientific literature in a 2013 study in the journal Obesity.

It calculates the eccentricity of a person’s midsection, or how round it is, from stick-like to perfectly circular.

While BMI does not differentiate between fat and muscle or account for fat distribution, BRI accommodates variations in body composition and fat distribution across genders and different ethnicities.

BRI includes waist and hip measurements and offers a more comprehensive evaluation of body shape and distribution of body fat.

According to experts, while BRI is a promising metric, it is not without limitations. A drawback is that it may still not capture the complexity of body composition across all populations and more studies are needed to validate BRI across different ethnic groups, ages, and genders to ensure its applicability.

The BRI calculation is also more prone to error because it is difficult to take accurate waist measurements.

Also, like BMI has straightforward cut-offs, BRI measurements are not as easy to interpret and can be harder to implement in routine practice.

Even though many experts call for replacing BRI with BMI, many doctors have their doubts about it. Many feel that BMI is deeply embedded into the healthcare system and public health tracking systems and will not be easy to change.

BMI is incorporated into growth charts for children, drug dosing, and many other clinical practices, which can be changed to substitute.

Many experts feel that every index is flawed since they all put people into categories and don’t always adequately account for demographic differences in individuals. It will not be very easy to replace one system with the other.

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