(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) The largest organization of doctors in the United States urged doctors to get rid of body mass index [BMI] as the primary measurement for a healthy body weight because the measurement system is “racist.”
The American Medical Association [AMA] stated that the metric has been used for “racist exclusion” and failed to take into account the differences in body composition of people based on their race and sex, the Daily Mail reported.
BMI is measured by dividing a person’s weight into kilograms or pounds by the square of height in meters or feet, the publication added. Even though this system is deeply ingrained in the medical system as a way to measure the health of a population, the AMA stated that BMI is very racist.
“Our AMA recognizes the issues with using body mass index (BMI) as a measurement because: (a) of the eugenics behind the history of BMI, (b) of the use of BMI for racist exclusion and (c) BMI cutoffs are based on the imagined ideal Caucasian and does not consider a person’s gender or ethnicity,” the AMA Council on Science and Public Health said.
The AMA argued that even though BMI can be a useful tool for researchers to gain a macro-level view of a population’s overall health, it cannot predict the risk of disease on an individual level, especially when it comes to races and ethnicities.
“Numerous comorbidities, lifestyle issues, gender, ethnicities, medically significant familial-determined mortality effectors, duration of time one spends in certain BMI categories and the expected accumulation of fat with aging are likely to significantly affect the interpretation of BMI data, particularly in regard to morbidity and mortality rates,” the AMA committee added.
Additionally, the committee stated that doctors should take into consideration people with different eating disorders.
“Further, the use of BMI is problematic when used to diagnose and treat individuals with eating disorders because it does not capture the full range of abnormal eating disorders.”
