Body size does not determine health status, expert says
Body size does not necessarily dictate an individual's health status, according to Sasha Aparicio, a Nutritional Anthropologist.
Aparicio argues that various factors contribute to an individual's health, making it erroneous for society to equate body size or weight with health.
She indicated that the prevalence of diet culture perpetuates pressure on individuals with larger body sizes to lose weight to feel healthy.
Aparicio criticised the reliance on Body Mass Index (BMI), which considers a person's weight and height, as an inadequate measure for diagnosing health conditions.
“Diet culture is very wrongly rooted. Diet culture is a culture where we prefer smaller bodies over larger bodies, equate weight with health, body size with health and it's definitely not that clear cut but again it's influenced by a lot of the dieting industry in the West which has over time prioritized weight. BMI is outdated and should not be used to identify or correlate to an individual’s health. BMI is very misleading and now even in the US, they have pushed a lot of these BMI standards internationally, recognizing that when we are talking about clinical applications, they are not relevant,” she told GSW’s Wonder Hagan.
In place of BMI, Aparicio recommends the use of more appropriate methods such as blood, urine, and specific tests for detecting health abnormalities in individuals.
According to her, body stereotyping and misinformation about body size can be minimised through this, leading to a reduced inclination for individuals to resort to extreme weight loss measures.
“We have the measures to determine other much more important measures of health,” she added.
Watch the interview below.
