BMI Declared "Racist" By American Medical Association Because It Was Originally Used On White People

Obesity is quickly on the rise in the US, with more than 40% of adults who can be categorized as obese. To boot, more than 70% of Americans are overweight. Obesity is strongly linked to type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart attack, many cancers, and a wide variety of chronic illnesses. Given these risks, it's crucial to maintain a healthy body weight. Lifestyle modifications such as balanced nutrition, regular physical activity, and sufficient sleep, coupled with professional health guidance, can play a vital role in managing and preventing obesity. But our culture is more concerned with promoting body positivity and fat acceptance rather than actually encouraging people to live healthy lives free of metabolic disorder. Instead of tackling the obesity crisis in our society, the American Medical Association (AMA), the leading organization of physicians in the US, is trying to keep up with the progressive intersectional structure of our woke culture.

BMI Declared "Racist" by American Medical Association

The AMA is advocating for abandoning the body mass index (BMI) as the principal metric for determining healthy body weight, due to its "racist" underpinnings and insensitivity towards variations in body composition based on race and sex. Conceived by a white mathematician with a supposed focus on white bodies, the BMI is obtained by dividing a person's weight by the square of their height. For years, it has been embedded in the medical infrastructure as a tool to gauge public health on a macro scale. However, its apparent inadequacies are becoming more evident. The AMA asserts that the BMI neglects differences in body fat distribution and composition across diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

They claim that Asian individuals within a "healthy" BMI range still exhibit a higher risk of diabetes. Similarly, black women typically accumulate fat around their hips and legs, whereas white women predominantly store fat around their abdomen, posing higher health risks. Yet, both may present with the same BMI. The medical fraternity has emphasized the BMI's inherent flaws, with it reportedly failing to directly evaluate body fat and discrepancies in body composition across different racial and ethnic groups.

The AMA seeks to overhaul the existing approach by encouraging physicians to consider more than just the height-to-weight ratio. They recommend analyzing visceral fat, the type that builds up around the organs and poses the most health risks, as well as the percentage of fat, bone, and muscle in one's body. The organization also urges consideration of genetic and metabolic factors, such as irregular blood sugar levels.

The AMA Council on Science and Public Health recognized the problematic history and application of the BMI. It was developed not by a healthcare professional but by Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, a Belgian mathematician, who aimed to determine the height and weight of the 'average' man using a sample of white, European men.

While the BMI offers researchers a useful macro-level perspective on a population's overall health, the AMA declares that it cannot accurately predict disease risk at the individual level, particularly across diverse racial and ethnic groups. Traditional medical advice suggested screening individuals with a BMI of 25 or higher for type 2 diabetes. However, emerging evidence indicates that people of Asian descent are equally susceptible to the condition at a lower BMI of around 20, classified as "normal." Moreover, diabetes is two to four times more prevalent and fatal in black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans, raising serious concerns about under-diagnosis due to BMI-based screening catered to non-Hispanic white people.

The AMA insists that the utilization of the BMI is especially problematic in diagnosing and treating individuals with eating disorders, as it fails to capture the complete spectrum of abnormal eating behaviors. They recommend medical practitioners consider a person's weight and height along with their waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio.

Research suggests that visceral fat, which accumulates in the abdomen and surrounds the heart, liver, kidneys, and pancreas, is particularly hazardous to health. Consequently, the waist-to-hip ratio is among the alternatives proposed to replace the BMI. A ratio of 0.85 or higher in women and 0.9 or higher in men is indicative of high-risk levels of visceral fat.

The BMI can be problematic when applied to athletes and very fit people as well, as muscle is more dense than fat, so they may weigh more than the average person of their height because of how much muscle they have. However, just because BMI may not be a perfect way to measure health, that doesn't mean it should be thrown out completely. There is never any perfect way to measure health, but BMI should be included and used as a general indicator of health alongside something like waist-to-hip ratio. BMI, more often than not, can offer some important information about a person's health, and that spans across culture, race, gender, etc. If there are outliers of people to whom BMI doesn't apply, it can be replaced with something else.

But it's ridiculous that the woke ideology has even made its way into the medical system in a silly attempt to tear down supposed power structures between people based on the color of their skin. The priority should be placed on patients' health, not adhering to a progressive agenda that is determined to inverse a perceived oppression hierarchy.

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