"She is a perfectly healthy, 4ft 9in tall 10-year-old who swims, dances and weighs only six stone (84 lbs)."

Then her BMI is 18.1, which would not be classified as overweight. Something else must be wrong here.

Yeah, 18 is actually very close to underweight.

BMI is a useful tool because calculating body-fat percentage isn't easy (the simplest measure, callipers, is by far the least reliable), but it doesn't work for people of al body types, just most of the population.

To add to my post above...

http://www.halls.md/body-mass-index/bmi.htm

You can input your age and gender there. I put her height/weight, and her age, and this was the answer:

BMI: 18.2
Body Description: In Normal Range

Conclusion: Either Wii Fit has a bug, or there's something wrong in this story.

In some cases BMI can be misleading - like a muscular man who is 170 cm and weights 100 kg. However, I do not think there are kids with enough muscles to make BMI so misleading. I think the kid is really fat and the parents are just freaking out. Come on, parents would never tell their little princess that she is chubby.

How would WiiFit be able to take into account fat percentage? They've had articles about this before and if people are really that sensitive they shouldn't buy the game.

These are exactly the type of parents that wonders why their little girls have anal sex at 14 yo.

Maybe they should try to teach them that being fat or not is not the most important thing in the world.

I checked the thing out with some different values, and noticed something about the phrasing:

"she weighs only 6 stone"

why is he using this as his method of measurement? Surely if she has played Wiifit, it will show her what her weight is in pounds. he could have just quoted it from there, but instead he uses a far more general and less accurate measurement standard. If 6 stone is 84lbs, then 1 stone is 14 lbs

If she input her height just an inch shorter at 4'8" (like if she's 4'9" WITH shoes) and happened to be just 5 lbs heavier (entirely normal fluctuation range throughout a day) then that would put her at 89 lbs and 4'8" giving her a BMI of 20, which registers her as overweight.

even with putting her at her supposedly correct 4'9", she only has to be 9 lbs heavier(93 lbs) than 6 stone, which still doesn't bump her up to 7 stone (98 lbs)

Mind you, even with that, there's a good chance that a lot of that is muscle for a kid that swims and dances, but really, any kid that physically active should NOT be worrying about being called "fat" but this hardly comes across as being Wiifit's fault. People are so damn sensitive.

BMI is a decent way to figure "fitness" or whatever you'd want to call it, but not really universal.

For example, I'm somewhere in the 5' 11" - 6' 0" range, and to use BMI, I'd have to be roughly 180 lbs to not be "overweight". The problem being, there's no way I could get down to 180 lbs without starving myself, because of my build. My "ideal" weight (i.e. the weight I think I look the best at, and physically function the best at) realistically hovers around 190 lbs. Right now I have a little weight to drop to get there, but if I tried getting down to 180, it woudl take a toll on my overall fitness. I'd end up having to drop 10 lbs of pretty much muscle, which wouldn't be productive.

Long story short, there will be exceptions to every rule. BMI isn't perfect, but short of a complete examination by a doctor, fitness trainer, or something to that effect, nothing really is. People also need to trust their body as well, when it tells them what is right for it. I'm a little over 200 lbs right now, and feel like I drag a bit. If I can get back to 190, I know my body will feel loads of improvement.

No one here is saying that BMI is perfect or defending it. Is just that people are retarded for blaming Nintendo for a formula they did not invent and for their game calling them fat.

How stupid can people be to feel insulted by a game ?

Old topic is old. And lame.

Anyways, this isn't a problem with Wii Fit, it's a problem with BMI and people being too sensitive.

-edit

Also, my fiance swing dances and has a bunch of swing dancer friends and they aren't all skinny.  There are even some that dance quite often and even exercise regularly and they're still fat.  I think the funniest part of the story is that it shows up everywhere but I have yet to see a picture of the girl.