That argument is likely a distortion of the medical argument which goes something like, “People who are overweight by the medical definition of BMI between 25 and 30 are not necessarily unhealthy. There are some circumstances such as being an athlete or genetics that are associated with denser body compositions. BMI is a crude tool that is useful for some things but should not be used on its own to indicate health status.”
BMI isn’t science. Its an almost 200 year old equation that was arbitrarily fitted to data. There is no go reason square ones height except that it fit the data. The cutoffs are arbitrary and, at least in the US, shifted in 1997.
And there is a growing body of evidence showing it’s not accurate for many cases in addition to the one you provided.
We have better indirect measure and far better direct measures for assessing disease progression and likelihood of disease development. Getting rid of BMI won’t stop fat shaming, but I hope it gives people pause.
I completely agree, we need to move on from BMI. But it’s a bit silly to say it’s BMI isn’t science when it’s been used for the entirety of modern health sciences. People would be shocked by how many crude, yet useful enough measures that health sciences use even today. And it’s notoriously slow/stubborn in adopting the best tools for many methods. Still, humanity has continued to make scientific progress with them.
Show me the science in the particulars and I’m happy to change my mind. Its widespread use in the modern medical system doesn’t make it scientific. We continue to use generally true ideas such as drink water and then wrench them into prescriptive positions like drink 8 cups of water per day. Literally no science to support that claim.
