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Where is the beef? Waist circumference is more highly correlated with BMI and total body fat than with abdominal visceral fat in children

International Journal of Obesity volume 38, pages 753–754 (2014)Cite this article

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Several years ago a commentary published in IJO entitled ‘BMI, fat mass, abdominal adiposity and visceral fat: where is the ‘beef’?’ introduced several concepts related to the measurement of obesity and described the relationships among anthropometric and more direct measurements of adiposity.1 The 2007 commentary served to highlight the similarity in correlations between body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), and total and abdominal visceral fat (AVF). Despite significant progress in the characterization of obesity in the past several years, there remains confusion as to the value and relative merits of using anthropometric measures to estimate total and specific body fat depots in both adults and children.

Here we extend the results presented by Bouchard1 to children and adolescents, and expand the model to include results from dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). Our sample included 82 white girls, 118 African-American girls, 97 white boys and 83 African-American boys, 5–18 years of age, with a range of BMI (kg/m2) across normal weight, overweight and obese categories. WC and BMI were obtained by trained technicians using standard techniques, whereas fat mass (FM) and trunk fat were assessed using a whole-body DXA scanner (Hologic QDR 4500A; Bedford, MA, USA). AVF mass was assessed using a series of 5–8 cross-sectional abdominal magnetic resonance images (GE Signa Excite; GE Medical Systems, Milwaukee, WI, USA).2 Age-adjusted partial correlations among the body composition variables were computed using the SAS statistical package V9.3 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA). Correlations were computed separately in the four race-by-sex groups, and correlation means weighted by the number of subjects in each group were computed.

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Acknowledgements

The source of support for this work was provided by National Institutes of Health grant # RC1DK086881-01.

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  1. Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    P T Katzmarzyk & C Bouchard

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  1. P T Katzmarzyk
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Correspondence to P T Katzmarzyk.

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Katzmarzyk, P., Bouchard, C. Where is the beef? Waist circumference is more highly correlated with BMI and total body fat than with abdominal visceral fat in children. Int J Obes 38, 753–754 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2013.170

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