That makes some sense to me, some outlying body types can throw the data (although I’m given pause given that some of those outliers include entire ethnicities).

But even given more accurate testing we can all observe that some larger people are more active and eat more healthily than many skinnier people.

Given that conclusion, just how useful is body size as a measure of health?

Thanks for the detailed response. I find the area really interesting since I grew up in an environment where BMI and the dangers of being “overweight” were totally unchallenged.

However the “fuzziness” around this topic always bothered me. Playing rugby, almost every player on my team would be classed as either “Obese” or “morbidly obese” (especially if they were POC’s) despite being high-level athletes. Meanwhile my skinny stoner friends who sat around playing guitar hero all day were classed as being “healthy”, based on a metric that even it’s proponents agree makes no sense. I would say everyone has similar stories of larger people being healthier than many skinny people.

The fussiness extends to the outcomes too, since obesity is only a co-morbidity and also doesn’t apply in all cases it’s easy to say a “fat”person’s weight contributed to a heart attack when that either may not have been the case at all, or may have been a contributing factor but not the actual cause. It may be just as accurate in these situations to suggest that the added stress of being left handed contributed to a heart attack.

This very much sounds like I’m making a very specific argument but what you’re really hearing is my brain melting as it tries to decide between two conclusions:

1. Obesity IS the major health risk I’ve been led to believe despite the “fuzziness” in the data and observable conclusions.
2. Activists are correct when they say that all the data starts from the point that “fat is bad” and works backwards to justify that conclusion.

TL:DR I’m too dumb and my brain hurts.

I wouldn’t consider myself smart enough to make a serious argument on this one way or the other but would you mind explaining why your first point isn’t worth taking very seriously?

Every reputable source I’ve read agrees that BMI is a flawed system of measurement. If that really is the case then don’t points 2,3 & 4 naturally follow?