{"id":1951380,"date":"2023-06-19T19:12:01","date_gmt":"2023-06-19T23:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/american-medical-association-says-bmi-is-racist\/"},"modified":"2023-06-19T19:12:01","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T23:12:01","slug":"american-medical-association-says-bmi-is-racist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/american-medical-association-says-bmi-is-racist\/","title":{"rendered":"American Medical Association Says BMI Is Racist"},"content":{"rendered":"

14<\/div>SHARES<\/span><\/div>

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The American Medical Association (AMA) is discouraging doctors from using only Body Mass Index (BMI) to measure whether a person is a healthy body weight because the system is \u201c racist<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

BMI has been widely used because it is easily measured, is inexpensive, and has specific cutoff points for the overweight and obese classifications, the AMA said<\/a> in a post on its website Wednesday.<\/p>\n

However, BMI has been used for \u201cracist exclusion\u201d and has caused \u201chistorical harm,\u201d the medical organization said.<\/p>\n

The AMA\u2019s House of Delegates adopted a new policy<\/a> this month recognizing the issues with using BMI.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the newly adopted policy, the AMA recognizes issues with using BMI as a measurement due to its historical harm, its use for racist exclusion, and because BMI is based primarily on data collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic white populations,\u201d the AMA said in a press release.<\/p>\n

The new policy comes after the AMA Council on Science and Public Health presented a report addressing the BMI issues at the 2023 AMA Annual Meeting, which was held June 9 to 14 in Chicago.<\/p>\n

There are other issues with the BMI system, too, the AMA said.<\/p>\n

BMI is an \u201cimperfect measure\u201d because it does not directly assess body fat and is \u201cmisleading about the effects of body fat mass on mortality rates,\u201d the AMA\u2019s post said.<\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

The BMI system also does not account for differences across the sexes, genders, and age-span, the new policy says.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurther, the use of BMI is problematic when used to diagnose and treat individuals with eating disorders because it does not capture the full range of abnormal eating disorders,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

BMI should be used along with other measures like body composition, waist circumference, and genetic and metabolic factors, the new AMA policy says<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are numerous concerns with the way BMI has been used to measure body fat and diagnose obesity, yet some physicians find it to be a helpful measure in certain scenarios,\u201d said<\/a> AMA Immediate Past President Jack Resneck, Jr. M.D. \u201cIt is important for physicians to understand the benefits and limitations of using BMI in clinical settings to determine the best care for their patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

The AMA said it will support efforts to educate physicians on the issues with BMI and alternative measures for diagnosing obesity.<\/p>\n

The AMA is the largest organization of doctors in the nation with more than 271,000 members.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the body positivity and fat positivity movements have picked up steam in the U.S., arguing that obese people can be healthy.<\/p>\n

Fat activists have rebelled against \u201cdiet culture\u201d and made specific demands like free extra seats on airplanes to accommodate their size.<\/p>\n

In December, Time Magazine published<\/a> an article titled, \u201cThe White Supremacist Origins of Exercise,\u201d while Cosmopolitan\u2019s February 2021 issue featured plus-sized models with the headline, \u201cThis is Healthy!\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, doctors have pointed out<\/a> that weight gain doesn\u2019t always correlate to fat gain. For example, some people who exercise will end up gaining muscle weight, which will add to their overall weight.<\/p>\n

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The American Medical Association (AMA) is discouraging doctors from using only Body Mass Index (BMI) to measure whether a person is a healthy body weight because the system is \u201cracist.\u201d BMI has been widely used because it is easily measured, is inexpensive, and has specific cutoff points for the overweight and obese classifications, the AMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":1951381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[4123,8278,29112,4268,4903],"class_list":["post-1951380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire","tag-american","tag-association","tag-bmi","tag-medical","tag-racist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1951380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1951381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1951380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1951380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1951380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}