A consumer cooperative union has begun recalling an instant body-fat scale imported from China because the instrument was found to have no fat-measuring functions, union officials said Tuesday.
Handy Body Checker, sold by the Japanese Consumers Cooperative Union for around 800 yen to nearly 1,000 yen per unit, claims the percentage of a person's body fat can be measured in five seconds if users put their thumbs on the scale's metal plate.
But the scale was found to show estimated body-fat percentage figures only based on body data the person enters into the scale before using it -- height, weight and gender -- the officials said.
The co-op union has sold about 6,800 units at about 80 outlets across the nation since September. A Nagoya-based dealer had imported the product from China.
The problem surfaced when a user complained in June that the body-fat figure was always the same.
The product's label explained the mechanism of the scale, but a co-op official said, "This is clearly a case of false labeling.