Population averages cannot determine an individual’s health, let alone “perfection” (as if we could ever, or even want to, quantify that). “Initially it was used to categorize people and look at the distribution of a population,” says Diana Thomas, Ph.D., a professor of mathematics at West Point who’s published research on exercise and obesity. What's more, Quetelet never intended that this index be used to measure a person’s health or wellness at all. So the mean of this data might suggest who was the “ideal” white European man, but not the ideal for all men. So, he created the Quetelet Index by using a calculation involving a weight-to-height ratio and set out to determine "the ideal."Īnd guess what? He collected his data primarily from white European men. “And everything differing from his proportion or condition, would constitute deformity or disease. “If the average man were completely determined, we might consider him as the type of perfection,” he wrote in his book A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties. Still, he was passionate about figuring out what the “ average man” ( l’homme moyen, in French) looked like, an idea that already hinted that some people were inherently below average and, therefore, inferior to others. He was many things - a mathematician, astrologer, statistician - but he was not a doctor or a health expert of any kind.
Once upon a time, back in the mid-19th century, there lived a Belgian man by the name of Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet who was interested in studying human traits as they related to crime and mortality.
Where did BMI come from, and why was it created? Once you understand how the BMI became the standard of health, you’ll realize how it’s been used, whether consciously or unconsciously, to enact biases and discrimination that are harmful to marginalized people. How can it be racist?” - table that for a moment. If you read that last sentence and thought, “The BMI is just a number. (Hint: They're harming it.)īut besides the fact that the BMI is not a great assessment of a person’s overall health or even body composition, the hardest reality to digest is what fat activists and allied researchers have been writing about for years: That this number, in both its origins and application is racist. This all calls in to question whether or not blanket weight loss initiatives and deep-seated fears of “excess” fat are helping or harming the well-being of individuals and communities at large. In fact, chronic dieting can lead to heart attack and stroke.
This supposedly means that they are more "at risk" for high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.īut correlation with disease does not always equal causation of disease, and research shows that weight loss isn’t the effective cure-all it’s been made out to be. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health (OHM), Black women have the highest rates of "obesity" and being “overweight” - at least in the way those terms are currently defined - compared to other groups in the U.S. It is true that our BMIs have been gradually ticking up across the population, and this has caused many in the medical community to be concerned about our increased risk of disease.īut just how reliable is the link between higher BMIs and poor health?Īmidst that angst, body fat has come to be feared as one of the greatest threats to society. This calculation has been at the center of America’s fight against “the obesity epidemic,” a phenomenon the dangers of which many researchers have questioned. This number - intended to be an estimate of body fat - is calculated by dividing a person's weight (in kilograms) by their height in meters squared. Yet, the medical community has done just that when it comes to the use of one simple calculation: The body mass index (BMI).
Given how diverse human beings are, it's logical that pushing all individuals to maintain the same body standards would lead to trouble.
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