A top medical credentialing organization has come out with a new set of guidelines that deems measuring BMI — body mass index — essentially racist.
As reported by Fox News, the American Medical Association has declared that the long-used BMI measurement is an “imperfect” and “problematic” way to assess body fat, further claiming it has been used for “racist exclusion.”
The report said that the remarks were contained in a report that was presented at the 2023 AMA Annual Meeting that was held in Chicago earlier this month.
“BMI cutoffs are based on the imagined ideal Caucasian and [do] not consider a person’s gender or ethnicity,” the report stated.
The AMA’s report also made the accusation that the history of the BMI is founded in “eugenics,” which is “the scientifically inaccurate theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations,” per the National Human Genome Research Institute.
Fox News added:
First created back in the mid-1800s by a Belgian mathematician named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, the BMI has been the international standard for measuring obesity since the 1980s, according to many sources, though some experts have questioned its validity.
A person’s BMI is calculated by dividing his or her weight by the square of his or her height in feet.
For example, someone who is 5’5″ and 135 pounds would have a BMI of 23.2.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that according to the BMI scale, a number lower than 18.5 is considered to be underweight, while measurements between 18.5 and less than 25 is deemed a health weight range, Fox News noted.
The Florida-based National Alliance for Eating Disorders has come out in support of the new AMA recommendations for de-emphasizing BMI measurements. The group also called for it to be done away with altogether “due to its racist and sexist standards and long history of harm, including harm toward those most marginalized in our communities.”
“We advocate for the recognition of weight diversity and hope that the medical field prioritizes health measurement tools that take into account the many factors that contribute to and impact a person’s health status,” said Dr. Katie Mittelstaedt, outreach and clinical consultant for group, in a statement to Fox News.
Project HEAL, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based group that focuses on eating disorders, also praised the AMA and echoed the claim that BMI is rooted in racism — without providing any evidence to support the assertion.
“The BMI is based on research from the 1830s meant solely to study populations of white European men and does not have the medical relevance or authority it has been purported to have,” Serena Nangia, spokesperson for Project HEAL, also told Fox in a statement.
BMI has been used to measure body fat for all races and ethnic groups, not just “white European men.”
Dr. Marc Siegel, professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, lashed out against the AMA’s stance during in interview on “The Ingraham Angle” earlier in the week.
“I didn’t believe the AMA was going to get involved in cancel culture, but now they’re canceling the body mass index, which is the thing I look at to at least start me off in the direction of obesity,” he said. “It’s not racist — it’s called good medicine.”
