His thinking went that you could take thousands of measurements, compare them, and find the ideal weight. Through calculating these samples he found that weight typically increases in relation to the square height of a person.īut there were big limitations to Quetelet's experiment. In the 1830s, Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet set out not to devise a test to quickly diagnose obesity (which was still years away from being widely perceived as a problem), but to find the " l'homme moyen" or the "average man". The first thing to know about the BMI is that it was created by a Belgian mathematician - not a doctor or health practitioner. So how did this formula come to define so much of what we think we know about weight and health, and why is it still in use? The BMI's really old, non-medical and racist origins But almost 200 years later, the BMI is ubiquitous - in bedrooms as people plug their dimensions into online calculators, in determining eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine, at the doctor's office, or in the World Health Organization's definition of obesity. "It was more of an academic exercise back in the 1830s," dietician Tim Crowe says. And the BMI's easy-to-understand formula, while a handy tool for those in charge of population-wide research, is not always up to the task. It's a simple formula: weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared and voila, you have your body mass index - a two-digit figure that slots you into a handful of equally clear-cut boxes.Ī BMI, as it's more commonly known, of below 18.5 supposedly means you're underweight, between 18.5 and 24.9 is normal, and above 30.0 is obese.īut this simplicity, many experts now say, hides the fact that determining what weight is healthy for you is far from this simple.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |