Another Take on BMI

[Gemini2874]

https://open.substack.com/pub/katema...utm_medium=ios

[prettyinpink]

I haven’t watched the Oprah special and don’t plan to, but an article on today.com indicated she purposely only asked doctors who promoted these new drugs and minimized the side effects, ignoring alternative viewpoints. It reminds me of when Paula Deen advertised for diabetes drugs, after promoting poor lifestyle choices with her cooking show. I don’t think these companies need Oprah’s help, though charitably I like to think she thinks she is doing a helpful thing.

I don’t agree with some of what you said in the other thread, but appreciate some of your points. I’ll add to this that when we see that percentage of overweight and obese Americans has increased since the 1990’s, I think it isn’t commonly known that the definitions were changed. Before 2000, overweight was defined as BMI > 27, not 25. Even accounting for that, BMI has still been increasing over time, but it’s not honest to not explain about definitions and how they are decided.

https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S...840-5/fulltext

Maybe we could agree that a conversation about weight at the individual level should be up to the person to decide with the medical provider of their choice. At the society level, fat shaming needs to end.

At the same time, without getting into specific actions which is too far into the political, I think there are some things government or other organizations could do to improve access to healthy foods and perhaps make certain disease-promoting foods less appealing or less of the default choice, for everyone. Nearly all of us could improve our food and fitness, not only those with certain numbers.

[Gemini2874]

Originally Posted by prettyinpink

Maybe we could agree that a conversation about weight at the individual level should be up to the person to decide with the medical provider of their choice. At the society level, fat shaming needs to end.

At the same time, without getting into specific actions which is too far into the political, I think there are some things government or other organizations could do to improve access to healthy foods and perhaps make certain disease-promoting foods less appealing or less of the default choice, for everyone. Nearly all of us could improve our food and fitness, not only those with certain numbers.

Yes, we can definitely agree on the above. I appreciate some of your points too!

[JackieB]

Originally Posted by prettyinpink

https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S...840-5/fulltext

At the same time, without getting into specific actions which is too far into the political, I think there are some things government or other organizations could do to improve access to healthy foods and perhaps make certain disease-promoting foods less appealing or less of the default choice, for everyone. Nearly all of us could improve our food and fitness, not only those with certain numbers.

I agree that there seems to be a lot of factors regarding society and its increase in size/obesity. I am sure everyone has seen the social media pictures from 40-50 years ago at the beach and the commentary about how Americans have become very unhealthy. We eat more, we move less, our food isn't food anymore, and our lifestyles including sleep and stress aren't conducive to good health. Health care is no longer health care; it's sick care.

There are a lot of factors involved, but I don't think anyone would argue that Americans have gotten more heavy. I'm in the public school regularly and I am stunned at how heavy our young people have become.

[Jane P.]

I did watch the special and she only had two doctors on the show. There were testimonials from 3 or 4 people. I found it to be quite superficial. A good documentary that delves deeper into the issue would be much more useful. Maybe PBS will do one at some point.

[hch]

Thanks for posting--without coordinating anything with you, I was already planning to start a different thread sometime about discussions with Kate Manne (she's written a new book, and when searching for something else on NPR, I found related content from several days ago).

What I think interesting about BMI discussion is that it's 2024 and we're still having it; around 25 years ago, I imagined that we would've switched to something else by now. Even at the time, problems with BMI were at least somewhat obvious. People were writing and talking about those limitations, and yet here we still are.

P.S. I've started the thread at NPR, "In 'Unshrinking,' a writer discusses [...]" [Kate Manne; exercise mention]