[dani__german]

BMI is an excellent metric for measuring your own body. Its fantastic. Its not perfect, but considering its two numbers, its amazingly useful and a super easy way to quantify how unhealthy you are. If you are not currently using Body fat percentage, and know what yours is at this exact instant, you should use BMI instead.

Here's a perfectly correct general statement: Any effort spent telling average people to not use BMI makes society less healthy. Average people are not getting BF% measured when you tell them not to use BMI. They are just ignoring all metrics and eating potato chips instead.

[calmbonsai]

I disagree with its use personally. There are many, many people whose BMI is in the 'Level 1 obese' category, but they're carrying around extra muscle not fat. Muscle is anywhere from 12-18% denser than fat. Also, DEXA scans are incredibly cheap (~$50) these days.

I do agree with your general statement about its use.

There's no reason NOT to use it, generally, just recognize that it has severe limitations when applied to the individual. Notably, effects of training and exercise on health using BMI as any sort of baseline or incremental figure of merit.

[bombcar]

This is true of so many rules of thumb. The fact that something doesn’t work in all cases does not mean that those cases that it identifies as problematic can be ignored.

Spend less than you make is another one - sure there are edge cases where that is not appropriate. But in most cases, it is, but most people arguing that it doesn’t apply to them are they very people to whom it should apply most strongly.