New York Times Guide to Obesity
The New York Times has published a health guide to obesity. It’s the usual mix of conventional knowledge on obesity, and immediately commits the cardinal sin of obesity guidelines: “There are many ways to determine if a person is obese, but experts believe that a person’s body mass index (BMI) is the most accurate measurement of body fat for children and adults.”
Really? Who are these so-called experts? It has been demonstrated repeatedly that BMI is in no way an accurate or relevant health measurement, because it doesn’t take into account muscle mass, skeletal structure, or actual fitness. This whole obesity scare is really cosmetic, and poorly researched cosmetic at that. If there is an epidemic, it is an epidemic of non-fitness, which has little bearing on body type. If doctors were really concerned about the health of their patients, they would be testing their fitness levels, not using height and weight measures to push a diet pharmaceutical agenda.
Seriously, we all need a different measure that starts with how much we’re able to move around; that matters far more than waist and poundage measurements.