Tales of Interest

The White House recommendation of BMI as an exam-room benchmark would place doctors on the cutting edge of statistical medicine—circa 1850. That’s when a Belgian astronomer first conceived the height-weight ratio. BMI has its uses for aggregate population studies, but as an individual diagnostic tool, it boasts all the predictive utility of discredited standbys like cranial measurements and the Four Humours. …….

……BMI testing is worse than ineffectual – it’s damaging. The last thing kids need today is more body shame in a culture already hung up on celebrity waistlines and skeletal fashion templates. As a teen recently asked me at a school with an active obesity prevention campaign, “Don’t they understand how it feels to walk through the halls and be confronted with signs that say, ‘we don’t want anyone to look like you’?”

(via fatgirlposing)

(Source: healthateverysizeblog.wordpress.com, via sleepydumpling)

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   Yeah, like when your male, marathon-running health teacher has said the following things in class: When a girl says she...

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   According to the Body Mass Index, the only factors involved in determining whether or not someone is obese is their...

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    Ugh, no kidding. I remember junior high gym class, where we had to have our body fat measured by one teacher on one side...

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