Do you have a source for the claim that Nazis invented BMI? Thx
As far as I'm aware, the calculation was based on the work of an 1830s statistician, and promoted by a U.S. researcher in the 1970s.
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emeritrix
@anarchademic@kolektiva.social
Posts
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In case you haven't heard it lately, it's not a moral failing to be fat. -
In case you haven't heard it lately, it's not a moral failing to be fat.Sean,
Yes, the causes of different body weights have changed historically, and are shaped by things including food additives/product substitutions, environmental toxins, and cycles of starvation.
But, FYI (in case you or others are not already aware) there are a lot of fat activists who would be troubled by the assumption in that article that 'preventing ob*sity' is a desirable goal, since it assumes 'ob*sity' is inherently bad.
Here are some sources on those points (though some also make conventional negative assumptions about weight & use potentially offensive language)
From thermodynamic to metabolic understanding of weight (toxins, starvation), a few examples from an extensive literature:
Obesity as malnutrition: the dimensions beyond energy balance
https://www.nature.com/articles/ejcn201331The environmental account of obesity: a case for feminist skepticism [n.b. the 'environmental account' refers to things like urban design rather than endocrine disruptors] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21114084/
Prenatal Exposure to Multiple Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals and Childhood BMI Trajectories in the INMA Cohort Study
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37850789/Canaries in the coal mine: a cross-species analysis of the plurality of obesity epidemics [animals in research labs have also gotten fatter over the years, despite controlled environments]
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article-abstract/278/1712/1626/73594/Canaries-in-the-coal-mine-a-cross-species-analysisBody weight is not a good guide to health (though health is not a moral metric):
Cardiorespiratory fitness, body mass index and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39537313/
Relationship Between Low Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Mortality in Normal-Weight, Overweight, and Obese Men https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/192035Long‐term Effects of Dieting: Is Weight Loss Related to Health?
https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/spc3.12076More sources: https://libguides.pratt.edu/fatstudies