Aldolphe Quetelet, a Danish astronomer, developed the BMI in the 1830's using a cohort of French and Scottish men.
Typical of the time, these participants were lean, active, white males with unstable food supply.
academic.oup.com/ndt/article/23…
Typical of the time, these participants were lean, active, white males with unstable food supply.
academic.oup.com/ndt/article/23…
Quetelet's goal was defining the characteristics of ‘normal man’ and fitting the distribution around the mean.
By measuring a large cohort with their physical deviances, one would come closest to the ideal of what a human being should look like.
academic.oup.com/ndt/article/23…
By measuring a large cohort with their physical deviances, one would come closest to the ideal of what a human being should look like.
academic.oup.com/ndt/article/23…
Of note, his work provided the foundation for anthropometry, on which modern day eugenics is derived.
But that is a whole 'nother tweetorial.
sjdr.se/articles/10.10…
But that is a whole 'nother tweetorial.
sjdr.se/articles/10.10…
Throughout history, trends in fashion and appearance evolved.
But health and wealth was tightly associated with stable food supplies. Thus, being "well developed, well nourished" was exactly that.
Living in an average or larger body represented wealth.
But health and wealth was tightly associated with stable food supplies. Thus, being "well developed, well nourished" was exactly that.
Living in an average or larger body represented wealth.
In the 1930's American insurance companies began to study who was most insurable. They collected self-reported data on hight, weight, shoe size from clients.
These clients were financially stable enough to afford insurance and typically white men.
These clients were financially stable enough to afford insurance and typically white men.
In the early 1940s, Met Life developed tables of “desirable weight” that did not include a person’s age and introduced an initially arbitrary and subjective measure of body “frame” - small, medium and large.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10981254/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10981254/
It wasn't until 1972, that BMI resurfaced. Ancel Keys and colleagues popularized the use of BMI, claiming it was superior to measurements of fat by skin calipers and underwater weighing (body density).
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Ancel's cohort was comprised of men from Italy, USA, Finland, Japan, and South Africa.
Bantu men of South Africa were outliers in this data.
Keys’ findings weren’t representative of, or applicable to, the very South African men included in the study.
academic.oup.com/ije/article/43…
Bantu men of South Africa were outliers in this data.
Keys’ findings weren’t representative of, or applicable to, the very South African men included in the study.
academic.oup.com/ije/article/43…
As a tool, BMI is only 66% accurate in predicting adiposity - IN THE STUDIED POPULATION of white men.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9158840/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9158840/
The NIH adopted BMI as the metric of obesity in 1985.
Overweight 27.5-30
Obese <30
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3840463/
Overweight 27.5-30
Obese <30
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3840463/
In 1995, the WHO Expert committee adopted the BMI as a metric of obesity.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8594834/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8594834/
In 1998, the International Obesity Task Force, whose two principal funders were companies making weight loss drugs (fen-phen and redux), advised the NIH cutoff point between normal and overweight to decrease to a BMI of 25.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Subsequent studies show that BMI overestimates adiposity in Blacks . . .
sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/…
sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/…
Clearly, we have evidence that excess adiposity is associated with inc risk for many medical conditions. I am not here to dispute that.
The over-reliance on #BMI is a biased, discriminatory, flawed metric of health.
It is not an accurate tool across gender, race, and lifespan.
The over-reliance on #BMI is a biased, discriminatory, flawed metric of health.
It is not an accurate tool across gender, race, and lifespan.
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