LogFAQs > #943027560

MrMallard posted...

Of course, but what constitutes obesity for a Bulgarian person might not constitute obesity for a Polynesian person, for example. The BMI doesn't take muscle into account, and there are cultures around the world where people tend to be built stronger than a brick shithouse - they carry a lot of weight, their bodies take on a lot of weight, but they're healthy, active and live long lives. The BMI doesn't reflect that, since it considers the norms of 19th century European men as a universal measurement of health. So a perfectly healthy Polynesian dude might be ruled as obese on the BMI despite possibly being one of the healthiest people in his weight range.

The angle of the article in the OP is "the BMI is representative of a narrow subset of people, but their standard of health is applied to cultures who don't have the same life experience and lineage of that group of people". Obesity is unhealthy and any race or culture can be obese, especially in today's world of ultra-processed foods and emphasised sugar/sodium content in just about everything. But the BMI is a standard that represents a European standard, not a global one - meaning that people from other cultures could be lumped into being "obese" despite being a lot healthier than a person of the same weight with a different build.

Likewise, you might have a culture where people are typically leaner due to their diet and climate, and what might constitute "obese" for them will fall within a healthy weight bracket for the European standard. Unhealthy is unhealthy, but the BMI isn't a global measuring stick. It's a rough guide for a broad population of people in the 1800's, adapted in the early 70's as an indicator of personal health for all individual people.

I don't know how you can spout this when those having actually taken a public health/nutrition class in the State of Hawaii are taught that Polynesians/Native Hawaiian/Oceania peoples have one of the lowest health outcomes/life expectancy, in part, due to obesity.

And these are results from research from actual Hawaiians (part/whole) studying public health, not WhiTe pEOpLE!!.
https://www2.jabsom.hawaii.edu/native/