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Because body weight in children and adolescents is not proportional to height squared as it is in adults, providers classify youth as normal weight versus overweight or obese based on body-mass index (BMI) percentile for each age (BMI-z score) instead of BMI score (weight in kg/height in meters2). However, even BMI-z scores are problematic, given the rapid growth and normal changes in body-fat percentage that occur during adolescence.
To further characterize inaccuracies of BMI scores and identify better measures of body fat, investigators analyzed cross-sectional data on 2285 youth (ages 8–17 years; 55% male). The data were obtained from the 1999–2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which included dual-energy x-ra…