Overweight Boy Scouts barred from national Jamboree by new BMI requirement

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Boy Scouts at this year’s national Jamboree were kayaking, rock climbing, zip-lining and bike riding in 90-degree heat Monday. And for the first time, scouts and their leaders had to meet new health requirements: No one with a body mass index of 40 or higher was eligible to attend. A 16-year-old boy who is 5 feet 9 inches and weighs 150 pounds would have a healthy BMI of about 22.

The rugged terrain at Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve in West Virginia, where the Jamboree is taking place for the first time, warrants these new requirements, local Scouts and Scoutmasters at the Jamboree said. Overweight boys would have a tough time getting around and probably wouldn’t have much fun.

“It’s constant up and down elevation changes,” said Ron Blazak, one of 18 adult leaders attending this year’s Jamboree from the Boy Scouts of America Greater Cleveland Council, which sent four troops consisting of 150 scouts. “It’s much more strenuous.”

Blazak attended the last Jamboree in 2010 at Fort A.P. Hill, Va., which he said was a much flatter setting. Even getting to his campsite was more effort this year, he said, as their bus dropped them off about a half-mile away and they had to carry their heavy packs. There are 30,000 scouts, ages 12 to 20, and their leaders, participating in the 10-day event.

To his knowledge, “there was no one in the Greater Cleveland Council who was turned away because of a BMI issue,” Blazak said. Though he said it was possible “that someone read the requirements and shied away” from applying, as the Jamboree website stressed that the health requirements would be strictly enforced.

Applicants with BMIs of over 31.9 were reviewed by the Jamboree’s medical staff, which determined eligibility based on health history, health data and a recommendation from the applicant’s health care provider. Applicants with one or more risk factors, including prior heart attacks, tobacco use, or diabetes, were required in some cases to provide documentation of testing from their physician to ensure their ability to participate.

Though a recommendation of “no contraindications for participation” by an applicant’s health care provider did not necessarily guarantee full Jamboree participation, according to the Jamboree Website.

“We published our height [and] weight requirements years in advance and many individuals began a health regimen to lose weight and attend the Jamboree. But, for those who couldn’t, most self-selected and chose not to apply. We don’t have the number of Scouts and Scouters this has impacted,” Deron Smith, director of public relations for the Boy Scouts of America, said in a statement.

Carl Boyls, director of support services for the Greater Cleveland Council, said that the requirements were “not something new for the scouting family to get used to,” as BSA’s three other high adventure camps have had physical fitness requirements for years. Boyls said that most scouts apply two years in advance to attend a Jamboree, during which time they can train and carry out recommendations from their health care providers.

“You can do this, this and this to either lower your BMI or to get into shape or to take care of the condition if it’s not a severe medical condition,” he said. Most scouts have to train he said, as attending a Jamboree or high adventure camp is more rigorous than weekend trips.

Bradley Katcher, 14, of Avon, said within the first four hours of being at the Jamboree Monday, his troop sent a boy to the medical tent due to dehydration and overexertion. “I have a 45-minute walk from my camp back to the main center area,” he said. “For a Scout that’s overweight to obese, that could pose a health risk or a health hazard for them.

“There are Scouts in our council who, if they looked into specific requirements, would have had to lose some weight before coming to Jamboree,” Katcher said. Though these scouts, to his knowledge, had no interest in attending.

Scout Joe Stein, 17, of Sagamore Hills, runs track and cross country. He said he was struggling on the climb up to the shooting range Monday. He said following the BMI requirement is important because problems do arise.

“At Fort A.P. Hill, you might have been able to get away with it,” he said, referring to being overweight and unfit. “Here you have to walk to get everywhere.”

David Mack, 13, from Shaker Heights, said he thought the requirement made sense. “It just wouldn’t be a good experience,” he said. “It wouldn’t be fun.”

Mack went zip-lining Monday, which he said required hiking up a mountain. Monday night, he said, he ate corn-on-the-cob and barbecue chicken for dinner and a little Rice Krispies treat for dessert.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: nvillacorta@plaind.com, 216-999-4098. Twitter: @nvillaco

Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus

1. The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.

The BMI was introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician, not a physician. He produced the formula to give a quick and easy way to measure the degree of obesity of the general population to assist the government in allocating resources. In other words, it is a 200-year-old hack.

2. It is scientifically nonsensical.

There is no physiological reason to square a person's height (Quetelet had to square the height to get a formula that matched the overall data. If you can't fix the data, rig the formula!). Moreover, it ignores waist size, which is a clear indicator of obesity level.

3. It is physiologically wrong.

It makes no allowance for the relative proportions of bone, muscle and fat in the body. But bone is denser than muscle and twice as dense as fat, so a person with strong bones, good muscle tone and low fat will have a high BMI. Thus, athletes and fit, health-conscious movie stars who work out a lot tend to find themselves classified as overweight or even obese.

4. It gets the logic wrong.

The CDC says on its Web site that "the BMI is a reliable indicator of body fatness for people." This is a fundamental error of logic. For example, if I tell you my birthday present is a bicycle, you can conclude that my present has wheels. That's correct logic. But it does not work the other way round. If I tell you my birthday present has wheels, you cannot conclude I got a bicycle. I could have received a car. Because of how Quetelet came up with it, if a person is fat or obese, he or she will have a high BMI. But as with my birthday present, it doesn't work the other way round. A high BMI does not mean an individual is even overweight, let alone obese. It could mean the person is fit and healthy, with very little fat.

5. It's bad statistics.

Because the majority of people today (and in Quetelet's time) lead fairly sedentary lives and are not particularly active, the formula tacitly assumes low muscle mass and high relative fat content. It applies moderately well when applied to such people because it was formulated by focusing on them. But it gives exactly the wrong answer for a large and significant section of the population, namely the lean, fit and healthy. Quetelet is also the person who came up with the idea of "the average man." That's a useful concept, but if you try to apply it to any one person, you come up with the absurdity of a person with 2.4 children. Averages measure entire populations and often don't apply to individuals.

6. It is lying by scientific authority.

Because the BMI is a single number between 1 and 100 (like a percentage) that comes from a mathematical formula, it carries an air of scientific authority. But it is mathematical snake oil.

7. It suggests there are distinct categories of underweight, ideal, overweight and obese, with sharp boundaries that hinge on a decimal place.

That's total nonsense.

8. It makes the more cynical members of society suspect that the medical insurance industry lobbies for the continued use of the BMI to keep their profits high.

Insurance companies sometimes charge higher premiums for people with a high BMI. Among such people are all those fit individuals with good bone and muscle and little fat, who will live long, healthy lives during which they will have to pay those greater premiums.

9. Continued reliance on the BMI means doctors don't feel the need to use one of the more scientifically sound methods that are available to measure obesity levels.

Those alternatives cost a little bit more, but they give far more reliable results.

10. It embarrasses the U.S. It is embarrassing for one of the most scientifically, technologically and medicinally advanced nations in the world to base advice on how to prevent one of the leading causes of poor health and premature death (obesity) on a 200-year-old numerical hack developed by a mathematician who was not even an expert in what little was known about the human body back then.

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