Are bathroom scales that measure body fat, muscle, etc dangerous?

Mum bought bathroom scales that send an electrical current through your body to measure % body fat, muscle, etc. She's paranoid and insist that it's dangerous, however I told her it's no worse than getting an electric shock. How can I convince her that these are perfectly safe? For instance, does anyone know how the current and voltage compares to an electric shock?

Public Comments

1. They are perfectly safe. The electric current is too small to do any harm whatsoever.
2. The electric current is totally harmless.....well, I would take the results you get from these types of scales with a grain of salt. These kind of scales use bioelectrical impedance to measure your body fat versus lean body weight. They send a mild electrical current from one foot to the other to do the measurement. In other words, the results you see are only an estimate based on the electrical resistance in your body, not necessarily bodyfat. The results can be easily thrown off by how much water you drink and what you've eaten (salty foods will decrease your readings). As a test, you can make it look like you're dropping bodyfat quickly on these scales by drinking a lot of water or eating a lot of ham or salty chips