Unfortunately, they are. However, I don't think most insurance companies put you into a lower category based on BMI alone until you hit 27 or so. It's still p

Unfortunately, they are. However, I don't think most insurance companies put you into a lower category based on BMI alone until you hit 27 or so. It's still possible to be at a healthy body fat percentage and have a BMI of 27 or higher, but obviously it's not as likely as it is at the cutoff of 25. Overall, I think BMI is probably a pretty good overall metric, just not a good diagnosis for an individual. For instance, a physician might notice that a patient has a BMI above 25, but then see that waist to height ratio or a bf measurement looks very favorable. From a broad numbers perspective, I think BMI is probably very useful - for instance, if you notice that a higher percentage of a population has a BMI in excess of 27 than in previous years, you can safely estimate that the population is becoming increasingly overweight. I suspect that the situation where people have high bmi's with low body fat is limited to a small number of athletes who are not typical of the population at large.