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The American Medical Association just announced its adoption of a head-scratching new policy that seems to be aimed not so much at improving people’s health, but at appearing sensitive and “woke.”
The new policy is “aimed at clarifying how body mass index can be used as a measure in medicine.” BMI, apparently, has a “problematic history” because it “does not account for differences across race/ethnic groups, sexes, genders and age-span.”
“BMI,” explains the Centers for Disease Control site (for now — they may not be up to “woke” speed just yet), “is a simple, inexpensive and noninvasive surrogate measure of body fat. In contrast to other methods, BMI relies solely on height and weight and with access to the proper equipment, individuals can have their BMI routinely measured and calculated with reasonable accuracy.”
Can, they though, CDC? What about BMI’s “historical harm,” “its use for racist exclusion” and data “collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic white populations?”
Acknowledging that simply measuring a person’s height and weight may not provide the most accurate information about the person’s body fat percentage, but blaming it on something vaguely racist, the AMA suggests physicians dive deeper into just how fat you really are by measuring your visceral fat, body adiposity index (the ratio of hip width to body height), body composition, relative fat mass, waist circumference and genetic/metabolic factors. (I can’t wait!)
“The policy noted that BMI is significantly correlated with the amount of fat mass in the general population but loses predictability when applied on the individual level,” the American Medical Association profoundly announced. “The AMA also recognizes that relative body shape and composition differences across race/ethnic groups, sexes, genders, and age-span is essential to consider when applying BMI as a measure of adiposity and that BMI should not be used as a sole criterion to deny appropriate insurance reimbursement.”
Essentially, as any muscle-bound Olympic athlete could tell you, BMI is not the be-all-end-all diagnosis of obesity. Yet for most people, it can give a pretty accurate picture of whether you’re overweight. And after a convoluted 350-word explainer, the AMA concludes that, “It is important for physicians to understand the benefits and limitations of using BMI in clinical settings to determine the best care for their patients,” which I hope physicians would have learned on day one of med school.
