photo: Peter Forret/ BY-NC-SA

The following aired on KCBS.

By: Bria Bryant 

Ever wonder how the doctors determine who's fat and who's not?

My doctor started with all the regular questions: are you eating your fruits and vegetables? She listened to my heart and tapped my knee with the little triangle on a stick. I checked out fine. Then she looked at her chart and told me I was overweight. She tried to say it nicely, but it didn't come out that way. 

When I told my friends about it, several said the same thing had happened to them. So I did a little research. The standard height to weight ratio is called Body-Mass-Index.

The BMI is cheap, fast, and simple. 

But its got a lot of problems. The BMI doesn't account for muscle weighing more than fat, or for ethnic differences. A spokesperson for the National Institute of Health said the most common complaint is people being misclassified as overweight.

In my high school health class we learned another way to measure our health. We counted the amount of carbs, fats, proteins, and sugar we ate each day. And I think that's more helpful than some old calculator that labels people obese.