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 Pub date
2007-02-22

Keeping Tabs on Your Fat

Source:NEW YORK TIMES  Editor:By ABBY ELLIN  Read:

Keeping Tabs on Your Fat

STUDIES have found that a person? body-fat percentage can often be a better indicator of health than weight. So it? not surprising that sales of scales with built-in body-fat monitors are up. Last year 436,000 units that measure body fat were sold, up from 316,000 in 2004, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm.

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Homedics Tri-Fitness Health Station SC-560 $69.99, www.homedics.com. Off by 4.1 percentage points, this body-fat monitor was the most inaccurate of all those tested. Still, only this model has a calorie predictor, which Ms. Bauer said can give the non-obese a good ballpark gauge about how much to consume to maintain their weight. A nutritionist would also take into account a person’s “genetic metabolism and medical status,” Ms. Bauer said. Your age, height, fitness level and gender are stored for the life of the battery.

Tanita Innerscan BC551 $139.99, www.thecompetitiveedge.com. If you want to know your body fat, body mass index, weight and how hydrated you are — voilà! The InnerScan uses B.M.I. to estimate caloric intake, which Ms. Bauer said is a good method, but not foolproof. (She said examining one’s urine can gauge hydration; dark yellow spells dehydration.) Mr. Bauer’s body fat was off by only 2 percentage points, but the display was so “small” Ms. Bauer had to kneel to read it.

Health O Meter BFM-687 $34.98, at Sam’s Club stores. Ms. Bauer found this bare-bones model easy to program. It calculates weight, body-fat percentage, B.M.I. and water percentage. This scale’s body fat reading (15.1 percent) was most consistent with the hospital reading (15 percent). The downside? The machine turns off quickly, so she “had to keep hitting the ‘power on’ to finish reading the measurements.”

Angela Jimenez for The New York Times

Omron HBF-500, $99.99, amazon.com. This scale, which has a handgrip with electrodes, offers a more thorough reading by sending a signal head to toe, its makers claim. Ms. Bauer didn’t think a fuller reading made a difference; her husband’s body-fat percentage was 2.5 percentage points lower than the hospital reading. Still, Ms. Bauer didn’t consider so small a discrepancy a problem. The scale also measures B.M.I. and resting metabolic rate (the number of calories a body burns at rest and fasting).

The gold standard for measuring body fat is underwater weighing, but a test costs about $200 to be done professionally. (The more body fat you have, the less you weigh in water.)

The new generation of at-home body-composition scales are cheaper and more sophisticated than those introduced in the late ?0s. The ones featured here all store data for four people and use bioelectrical impedance, a low level current that travels through a user? body to gauge the amount of muscle and fat.

To test the scales?accuracy, Joy Bauer, a registered dietitian in Manhattan and Rye Brook, N.Y. compared their readings to that of an underwater unit at St. Luke?-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan. Her husband, Ian, was the guinea pig. His hospital reading was 15 percent. She is also a consultant on the response to overly skinny models by the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

Ms. Bauer was pleasantly surprised at how well the at-home models compared. ?hey only varied within 0.1 to 4?percentage points, Ms. Bauer said. Anything more than 4 percent off would indicate a problem with the machine.


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