LogFAQs > #943020150

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bmi-scale-racist-health_l_5f15a8a8c5b6d14c336a43b0

There is growing criticism for the use of BMI. For example, it doesnt take body composition (fat versus muscle) into account, and a persons weight doesnt correlate directly with their health. However, theres not much mainstream discussion about its racist roots or the way it furthers the oppression of and discrimination against certain groups.

A growing number of experts believe its time to change that.

The BMI is inherently racist and sexist.

The racist roots of the BMI go back a long way. Created by Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet in 1832 as the Quetelet Index, the scale was created using data from predominantly European men to measure weight in different populations.

Although Quetelet noted that it was a population-level tool and not meant to be used on individuals, physiologist Ancel Keys reintroduced the calculation in 1972 as the Body Mass Index, and it has since been adopted by the medical community as a way to measure individual health. A BMI outside the normal range (18.5-25) is considered less healthy, and an indicator of greater health risks.

While the BMI has countless failings as a reliable tool, racism is chief among them, said Sabrina Strings, an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine.

It is racist, and also sexist, to use mostly white men within your study population and then try to extrapolate that and create norms and expectations for women and people of color, Strings told HuffPost. They have not been included in the initial clinical analyses, and therefore their actual health outcomes cannot be determined by these findings.

In short, the way BMI is being used is unscientific because of its origins and the homogenous population it was created from.

Weight standards have long been used to perpetuate racism.

In her book Fearing the Black Body, Strings outlines the history of body standards and the ways in which thinness was used to uphold white superiority as recently as the early 20th century.

She describes how the thin bodies of northern and western Europeans were upheld as the ideal, while the often larger bodies of eastern and southern Europeans, as well as Africans, were considered signs of their inferiority. All of this was before we really knew anything about the (still blurry and confounding) relationship between weight and health. The modern BMI and its categories underweight, normal, overweight and obese have inherited much of that racism.

Even after all of the work that Ive done and the work that Ive read about the creation of these weight categories, Ive long wondered, Who is this even based on? Strings said. This 18.5-25 normal BMI category that they arbitrarily came up with what is that even about? Theres something so strange about that. I feel almost certain that they were not researching people in places like Samoa, where people can be healthier at much heavier weights.

There are a number of reasons why different groups tend to be more obese, but is the BMI really racist?