It’s time to abolish Body Mass Index

For me, visiting the doctor’s office is a stressful experience: the scales, the invasive questions, the overly excited facial expressions. Ever since I was a child, I have dreaded seeing my pediatrician. 

There is one part of my annual check-ups that irks me the most: weigh-ins. It is an unforgettable, haunting experience. The feeling of my heart pounding as I pull the long, scratchy gown over my head and tighten the string around my waist. My pulse pounds against my wrist, and drops of sweat roll down my forehead as the doctor leads me to the scale and prepares to take my weight.

After I step off the scale, my weight is written on a piece of paper attached to a clipboard, which will be evaluated using my height and age against that of millions of teenagers across the nation. I’m acutely aware that if my Body Mass Index (BMI) is not between 18.5-24.9, referred to as the “normal” range, I will be deemed unhealthy or “in need of nutritional and bodily assistance.” 

I can attribute this experience to Adolphe Quetelet, who was a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist. Quetelet was not a physician, nor did he study medicine. However, he pioneered multiple studies regarding human growth, most famously designing Quetelet’s Index in the 1830s.

The index he created was exclusively designed for white, male Western Europeans. It sought a statistical average, and had little to do with determining overall physical health. He intended to produce a formula to estimate whether a person has a healthy weight by dividing their weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared. Quetelet’s Index was termed the Body Mass Index in 1972. Presently, medical personnel use Body Mass Index to largely determine the physical health of an individual.

Measuring Body Mass Index continues to prove its inaccuracy in determining overall physical health. This affects Black people disproportionately. Specifically, the index does not take into account average body fat differences between Black and non-Black individuals. Typically, individuals of African descent tend to hold more fat in their lower bodies.

According to studies conducted by the Endocrine Society, BMI overestimates health risks for Black people and underestimates health risks for Asian people. Notably, women of African descent have the highest rate of obesity compared to other demographics globally. 

Genetic differences are not taken into account when evaluating Body Mass Index. This renders the index unreliable. For example, a Black woman who is otherwise healthy could be deemed severely unhealthy when compared to a woman of European descent, simply because of differences in their Body Mass Index. 

Additionally, experts suggest that Black women are the most at risk for obesity-related conditions because they tend to have a higher BMI. Having a higher weight does not mean that these women are in poor health, but medical professionals may claim that they are.

Body Mass Index encourages the idea that thin bodies of European individuals are the standard to which all people should be held, and are therefore preferable to larger bodies, especially those of African descent. 

Additionally, medical discrimination based on Body Mass Index is apparent with patients with high, ranging from overweight to clinically obese, BMIs. Several studies analyzing weight bias in healthcare concluded that 12% of doctors have reported that they did not want to touch overweight patients, therefore refusing them treatment. Furthermore, 91% of healthcare professionals do not have scales available for patients over 350 pounds, and 24% of nurses reported they felt “repulsed” by overweight patients.

Quetelet’s work has been used to justify biological and medical racism for centuries. BMI is racist, outdated, and unnecessary, and should be completely abolished as it continues to harm the mindset of young children, teenagers and adults.

Body Mass Index is a social construct, and does not take in nearly enough factors in order to correctly evaluate one’s health and wellbeing validly. We are in desperate need of an improved system for doctors to properly evaluate the health of an individual.

This system forces people of all ages and genders with completely different genetics and lifestyles to physically abide by a narrow range of numbers, making someone who might be perfectly healthy fall under a category of “obesity.” This can result in heightened anxiety and feelings of guilt and shame for being a part of an “unacceptable category.”

This system should not be used to determine one’s health. Throughout the centuries, we have learned more about the makeup of the human body, and why we all look differently and have completely different features and body types. We all originate from different parts of the world, explaining our different genetics, but the beauty of the human race is that everyone is made differently. The bodies we were given are the ones we should value, respect, and appreciate.