#WEIGHT SCIENCE EVALUATING THE EVIDENCE FOR A PARADIGM SHIFT FULL#
When we simply categorise people as underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obese, and assign certain health risks to these categories, we risk ignoring the full picture. Your worth – and health – cannot be defined by a single number.Others highlight that as the BMI formula originated from data of European men, it lacks effectiveness for people of other races and ethnicities. Researchers say the lack of this information, can “introduce misclassification problems that may result in important bias in estimating the effects related to obesity” (Rothman, 2008). As such, athletic people with a high muscle mass could be classified as “overweight” or “obese”, despite them being “healthy”.īMI also does not consider age, sex, or bone structure. Firstly, BMI does not acknowledge the differences between muscle mass and fat distribution. However, this simple formula, which was designed before calculators and computers existed, fails to consider several important factors. Why you shouldn’t let BMI define your healthīMI is calculated by dividing an individual’s weight by their height squared. In recent times it has been reported that the use of the BMI fosters weight-based discrimination and stigma, exacerbates mental health concerns such as eating disorders, increases body dissatisfaction, and that it is “a very poor proxy of health… potentially lead to more harm than good”. But Quetelet never intended his model to be used in this way BMI was meant to be a population study, and not a personal indication of one’s health status.
For almost 200 years, healthcare professionals have used this system to gauge a person’s health, and associated health risks. In the 1830s, Belgian mathematician and astronomer Lambert Quetelet developed a system to classify the average, “ideal” man, by measuring the height and weight of French and Scottish participants, namely European, White men. “Obesity” medicalises body size based on the Body Mass Index (BMI), but we now know that health is determined by more than a number. A new study has revealed attitudes towards obesity and the experiences of people living with obesity in Australia, leaving those in the sector concerned it could contribute to weight stigma and discrimination.
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