Where do you fall?
I recently fell across several websites that are fighting for fat acceptance. A lot of what they say makes sense to me. And one thing they fight over is BMI and what a crock of bull it is. Were you aware that BMI was invented between 1830 and 1850? Did you know that it was created to broadly categorize populations for purely statistical purposes? It was never meant to gauge someones state of health. And keep in mind that in 1998 the National Institute of Health LOWERED the normal/overweight cut-off from BMI 27.8 to BMI 25. This change made about 30 million Americans who were healthy before the change, overweight. It makes me serously doubt the “epidemic” that everyone is crying about.
I think to best illustrate the true accuracy of BMI is to see the Illustrated BMI Categories photoset on flickr. Take a look at all of them, especially look at Moxie, she really illustrates the absurdity of it all.
BMI does not take into account the age of the person, bone density, muscle mass or sex. What would be normal for a 15 year old girl, shouldn’t be the same normal for a 70 year old man. I think we need to really take a look at what “healthy” really means.
