Current Events > Plus-sized Huffpost writer claims BMI is useless for measuring weight and racist

(+) Yeah! (+)

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?

Basically mandatory to this topic:
https://youtu.be/3csKRWvcu_k

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The BMI Is Racist And Useless. Here's How To Measure Health Instead.
Body mass index numbers don't give a full picture of well-being, and they yield to discrimination against marginalized bodies.
By
Boogie2988
07/20/2020 04:00pm EDT | Updated July 23, 2020

found the problem

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Do we have anything left that isnt racist?

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BMI can be useless if you're like a body builder and being told you're a fatty for being muscular

otherwise it's potentially quite useful

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s0nicfan posted...

Basically mandatory to this topic:
https://youtu.be/3csKRWvcu_k

Lmao, shes dumb. Skinny people can be profoundly unhealthy as well anyway.

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while screaming racism and sexism is counterproductive as fuck and just shows that the writer wants that clickbait money, its true that lots of older studies and "established medicine" are primarily based off of white male subjects which can horribly skew results and conclusions. an example that comes to mind is some heart medication, which in recent years has been shown to have reduced effectiveness or cause side effects in black people.

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TheOrgyPorgy posted...

BMI can be useless if you're like a body builder and being told you're a fatty for being muscular

otherwise it's potentially quite useful

And if you see a bodybuilder with a high BMI but looks really fit and has a 34 inch waist, you know he's not overweight anyway. It's most useful in obese people in determining how high their risk of serious illness is and setting a benchmark to lose weight.

Nobody gives a shit about the health of obese people, they just want to ridicule them and use that as an excuse.

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We're not exactly strangers to arbitrary and potentially misleading systems of measuring things - like basing length off of a supposed king's foot.

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KiwiTerraRizing posted...

Nobody gives a shit about the health of obese people, they just want to ridicule them and use that as an excuse.

Damn, got it before I could.

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KiwiTerraRizing posted...

Nobody gives a shit about the health of obese people

The obese people certainly dont!

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Yeah Im 5'9" and when i was194 or so at like 8% body fat with a sub 30" waist I was considered obese by the bmi. I dunno about racist but its kinda garbage regardless.

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not to interrupt the circle jerk but I have seen several studies saying that suggest black women (to a certain extent) can genuinely carry a decent bit more weight before tripping into the "obese" category

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090611142407.htm
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-racial-bias-obesity-measurement-idUSTRE53E6WN20090415


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I mean, if the bodily norms of one culture are held up as the global image of an ideal body, then it can be seen as one culture's norms dictating the norms of other cultures. The shape of a healthy body can be shaped by the native climate and diet, and the European standard isn't going to apply to every other continent or culture.

Europe already has a history of white supremacy through their centuries of colonisation, pushing the European standard onto other populations through genocide - physically through mass extermination, as well as culturally by suppressing language and culture that doesn't fit the norm of the invading country - so it makes sense that people see the BMI as an expression of that. Unless you meet the standard that was set by a bunch of 19th century Europeans, the modern medical community will consider you to be unhealthy. Considering the baggage that's tied with European norms being shoved into other cultures, you can see why people would question the validity of the BMI when applied to all cultures.

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MrMallard posted...

I mean, if the bodily norms of one culture are held up as the global image of an ideal body, then it can be seen as one culture's norms dictating the norms of other cultures. The shape of a healthy body can be shaped by the native climate and diet, and the European standard isn't going to apply to every other continent or culture.

Europe already has a history of white supremacy through their centuries of colonisation, pushing the European standard onto other populations through genocide - physically through mass extermination, as well as culturally by suppressing language and culture that doesn't fit the norm of the invading country - so it makes sense that people see the BMI as an expression of that. Unless you meet the standard that was set by a bunch of 19th century Europeans, the modern medical community will consider you to be unhealthy. Considering the baggage that's tied with European norms being shoved into other cultures, you can see why people would question the validity of the BMI when applied to all cultures.

Obesity is medically and scientifically unhealthy. European norms my ass

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MrMallard posted...

I mean, if the bodily norms of one culture are held up as the global image of an ideal body, then it can be seen as one culture's norms dictating the norms of other cultures. The shape of a healthy body can be shaped by the native climate and diet, and the European standard isn't going to apply to every other continent or culture.

Europe already has a history of white supremacy through their centuries of colonisation, pushing the European standard onto other populations through genocide - physically through mass extermination, as well as culturally by suppressing language and culture that doesn't fit the norm of the invading country - so it makes sense that people see the BMI as an expression of that. Unless you meet the standard that was set by a bunch of 19th century Europeans, the modern medical community will consider you to be unhealthy. Considering the baggage that's tied with European norms being shoved into other cultures, you can see why people would question the validity of the BMI when applied to all cultures.

YourDrunkFather posted...

Do we have anything left that isnt racist?

BMI can be useless, but not for the people complaining that it's useless

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YourDrunkFather posted...

Do we have anything left that isnt racist?

Nope. Even this conversation racist af

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While BMI is not 100% accurate for all body types, the people who complain about it are generally not the 64 250lb fit dudes it might mistakenly call obese. Chunky Karen is fat under any definition of fat that exists, and her weasel words words will not change that eating 4000+ calories per day is unhealthy for her.

The irony of things like Health at Every Size is that if you follow their exercise and eating recs, you'll lose a ton of weight.

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nemu posted...

While BMI is not 100% accurate for all body types, the people who complain about it are generally not the 64 250lb fit dudes it might mistakenly call obese. Chunky Karen is fat under any definition of fat that exists, and her weasel words words will not change that eating 4000+ calories per day is unhealthy for her.

Yep

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RebelElite791 posted...

Obesity is medically and scientifically unhealthy. European norms my ass

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.

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tote_all posted...

Correct and valid.

Strawman.

BMI should be changed, but the greatest detractors of BMI are people who are obese.

^^

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RebelElite791 posted...

The obese people certainly dont!

The latest extension to "weight is not the end-all be-all indicator of health" I've heard is "health is not the end-all be-all indicator of human value". Not sure what to think about that.

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YourDrunkFather posted...

Do we have anything left that isnt racist?

asbestos, I think.

90% of the time, BMI is perfectly fine. Yes, BF% is a better marker but BMI can be measured in about 30 seconds with the most basic of tools. It's supposed to be a quick and dirty measurement. This author wants to be poked with some calipers and and then told she's obese via a spreadsheet instead of a simple table? Yeah, right.
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shockthemonkey posted...

We shouldnt value people more or less based on their health, but we also shouldnt let weight get in the way of talking about health.

Sounds fair to me.

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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/

This is a FUCKING topic!

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