THINNER: Why Harvard Wants You To Be Unhealthily Thin.

The New Republic ^ | September 11, 2007 | Paul Campos

[KarlInOhio]

I question its use for tall and short people too. If you increase height by a certain proportion, I would expect that the "ideal" shape would increase by that amount in width and thickness too, thus the volume and weight would increase by the cube of the height change. Instead, the BMI only allows the increase by the square of the height. Thus tall people with the "right" BMI would look skinny compared to the body shape of someone with the same BMI at an average height.

If the average male height is 5'10" and the weight for a 25 BMI is 174 pounds, I would expect someone who is 10% taller(6' 5") to be allowed 232 pounds instead of 211 pounds.

[Steve_Seattle]

I am 6’1 and slender by nature, so 190 would be overweight for me. But I know people shorter than me for whom 200 is their normal, natural weight, and for them to try to be like me would be harmful, IMHO.

[CDHart]

"Don't believe it? Just drop by Walmart."

You are right! Wal-Mart is a people watcher site if there ever was one.

Carolyn

[dan1123]

I think the chain of causation is that cheaper foods tend to be high-fructose-corn-syrup and white flour based. These are probably the two biggest contributors to obesity. Whole wheat bread tends to be more expensive than white bread. The same with whole wheat pasta. Some fresh fruits and vegetables are cheap, but don’t last very long and cannot be frozen. Boxed foods tend to have white four, white rice, or lots of sweeteners.

Think of a diet where you have sugary cereal in the morning, chips for a snack, a (sweetened) peanut butter or baloney and mayo sandwich on white bread for lunch, and hamburger helper or chicken, rice and cream of mushroom for dinner. Sugar, starch, and fat are dirt cheap. Foods with high nutrients are far more expensive at the grocery store.

[Tax-chick]

What you say seems accurate enough, but it's not what the author said. He said that being poor causes poor health.

You mentioned that the poor "can't affford the best and promptest medical care," but that's only relevant if they're sick with something! It might result in a poor man's dying from a heart attack, where a rich man in the same would survive - but he had the heart attack for some reason other than income.

[Tax-chick]

Again, what you say seems accurate to me, but it's the opposite of the author's contention. He says that low income clearly illness, while the connection between high weight and illness is "unknown.":

it's simply not known if high weight increases overall health risk, or is merely a marker for factors, most notably low socio-economic status, which clearly do cause ill health.

[Calpernia]

bump

[dan1123]

>>
I question its use for tall and short people too. If you increase height by a certain proportion, I would expect that the “ideal” shape would increase by that amount in width and thickness too, thus the volume and weight would increase by the cube of the height change.
<<

You’re probably right. I would love to see some curve fit data for healthy height-weight ratios.

However, how about just using a water and fat percentage scale instead? It’s not like water and fat measurement scales are that expensive anymore. Why not get that measured at the doctor’s office instead of just height and weight? I suspect it is because BMI was created to work with existing measurements at the doctor’s office rather than a valid scientific conclusion.

[RockinRight]

I’m male, 30 years old, and 5’7” tall on a good day. I’ll admit I could stand to lose some weight.

However, the “experts” claim I should weigh around 148.

I’d look like Michael Stipe on crack if I weighed 148.

[RockinRight]

BMI actually says like 118 to 152.

118???? I’d be so thin I’d make the kids on the Sally Struthers commercials look like Michael Moore.

[RockinRight]

There isn’t even a male vs. female allocation for BMI...which is ridiculous.

[dan1123]

Again, what you say seems accurate to me, but it's the opposite of the author's contention. He says that low income clearly illness, while the connection between high weight and illness is "unknown.":

I get what you are saying. The author's contention isn't that poor people aren't fat, it's that poor people tend to live with less safety than rich(er) people and hence have a higher mortality rate. Think of all the expensive cleaning products, antibacterial everything, cars with 100 airbags, expensive low crime vs. cheap high crime areas, work environments, low-cost daycare, and all the places where money gives people protection from injury and disease. I believe these are the factors that the author is talking about.

[Tax-chick]

I’m 5’4”, and the bottom of the Weight Watchers range for women my height is 116. (118 is my goal, which I’m a bit over right now, but my husband thinks that’s too thin.)

A 5’7” man at 118 would look like a prison camp survivor. I occasionally seen men in the running magazines with a similar ht/wt ratio, and they look like prison camp survivors!

[RockinRight]

BMI is BS as far as I’m concerned.

[Tax-chick]

When you put it that way, it does make a little more sense than it seemed to at first!

[Sherman Logan]

You’ve heard of averages, I hope?

[dan1123]

With the measurements we can get in seconds now, we should be able to base your ideal fitness on age, gender, resting heart rate, blood pressure, fat and water percentage, height and weight. They could come up with some index based on all of these, or just the ones that tracked with heath most closely.

Of course, the calculation may be more complex, but an accurate number is far better than a misleading number.

[Sherman Logan]

Very few people in America die of infectious disease.

Poor people are on average much heavier, smoke more, are less well educated, are more likely to be drug users, and a whole host of other unhealthy factors. They also tend to have health care that isn’t as good.

It is a very well proven fact that poor people on average die much sooner than the middle class or rich, just as it is that poor people have a lot more babies.

[Tax-chick]

I think it works for a limited set of people. My BMI (which I don’t remember) showed that I was on the edge of underweight at 118, which agrees with Weight Watchers and a visual survey.

I like the idea of using more specific medical data to determine health risks, such as blood pressure, cholesterol, liver function, and so on.

[Skenderbej]

I have a hard time giving much credibility to the BMI and other “universal” standards of health. I was a high school athlete and played sports year round. I was 5’11, 190lbs my senior year without ever lifting weighs. Still, according to my health classes, I was 15lbs overweight.

I moved to eastern Europe 6 months out of school, stopped exercising, and dropped to 170lbs, which was in my “healthy” weight range. Still, I developed a pooch in my stomach and when I moved back to the states, I was pale and very unhealthy looking. My appearance was apparently disconcerting because my family and friends kept asking if I was sick.

Anyway, I got back to exercising and added moderate weight lifting to my schedule. I bumped up to 195lbs and had never been in better shape in my life. I looked healthy, felt healthy, and yet I was 20lbs over weight.