NEWS: The Deep Fried Witch Hunt

CULTURE: The Deep Fried Witch Hunt

As a male of the fat and hairy persuasion, I have not been much given to question whether being a thin hairy male would be a better or worse thing. Of *course* it's better to be thin that fat. Of *course*. I mean I happen to love a larger lady, but if the larger lady says she wants to be thinner for health reasons then it's clearly the lady I love- not the fatness- and her decision to diet is the wisest thing and should be supported. I can't love someone who died of Cornorary Heart Disease after all (not my bag, baby).

But then this article in Spiked! came to my attention.

The mere fact that things like the all-hallowed Body Mass Index chart are actually questionable at all came as news to me:

I keep my own commentary to a minimum because I'm too busy blinking in disbelief. I mean when an article is capable of hitting you with:

Then you've got to wonder if next someone will be telling you Dubya has an I.Q. of 208. Tired rhetoric tells us that:

But to have it slapped in our face that our wrongheadedness has gone so very deep and that our attitudes toward our bodies may be something more akin to scapegoating than concern for people's health is a proposition that is refreshingly worrisome.

This is an article from March about the flaws of BMI and athletes from espn.com

They also had one looking at BMI and the NBA, which is a much more interesting take, since the NBA does not employ 300-400 pound linemen, but alas, google did not return that story to me.

Since I've been overweight since I was oh... five, I've known of these issues with BMI since they were first talked about. My mother, particularly, has a fetish for learning about this shit. Anyway, the trouble with the BMI is that it doesn't take into account the difference between weight caused by fat and the weight caused by muscle. Since muscle is actually denser (and heavier), this means that very muscular men (Brad Pitt, for example) can register as overweight. People just have to realize that the BMI isn't the be all, end all, way to determine whether your weight is healthy or not. The big question is, does your weight negatively effect you? Is your cholesterol high? Are your joints suffering extra stress due to your weight? And so on.

Thanks for posting this, man. I show my gratitude by heroically offering to shave you.

According to the BMI I am morbidly obese, according to my doctors Im just mildly overweight.

Last time I was at the 'reccomended' weight according to the BMI I was in an eating disorder clinic recovering from bulimia.

BMI = bullshit

According to the BMI, I should be dead.

But anyway... we can nit pick about the BMI, but the fact is that it's not healthy to be "overweight" - however that is ultimately determined. The level of adult onset diabetes appearing in children is testament to that fact. America has a weight problem, and it's not going to be able to PC its way out of it.

In the nicest possible way that's like offering someone with a tat laser erasure immediately upon seeing it.

My hero is Hank McCoy.

Hairy, large, erudite men represent!

Exactly.

It makes me really sad to see these little kids who are so big that they huff and puff when they walk up one flight of stairs.

Its not only America that has that problem. Australia has a huge problem with obesity.

Hank McCoy's nose is also perpetually wet. Wet like a dog's.

Anyway, sorry if the shaving comment offended you.

[Edited on Oct 19, 2005 by Kid_Dangerbot]

And here we thought you were all gorgeous tanned surfers with cute accents.

It's not healthy to guzzle large amounts of sugary and fatty foods as it puts your system out of balance. If you don't, as far as is practical in a society which heartily endorses putting sugar and fat in everything, but are still a porker you have to put up with people imagining you going for your third triple cheese deep fried pizza topped with ice cream of the day even as you chastely munch on your carrot sticks.

Junk food makes me ill and tastes like shit. Carrots are crunchy and filling. I am a porker. It's disgusting eating habits that are bad for you and there's no actual visual representation of that. The concept that thin people are virtuous and eat well and fat people are evil and eat badly is exactly the myth thisarticle sets out to debunk.

Yeah, there's a dietary problem, but there are no quick and easy visual cues for you to know which people to victimise.

Sorry.

Actually, sorry, being fat is bad for you as well. Poor eating habits can be dangerous, but just actually being fat is bad for you.

I'm not going to waste my time since the original article states that the author knows that being fat for you is bad to begin with. The point of the article is to say that the issue is larger than just saying "lose weight and you'll be healthy":

People need to take a more holisitic approach to health, which absolutely is true. But to sit here and say that being significantly overweight isn't a health risk is ludicrous.

I don't think it's something that's easy enough to stick on a neat little poster associating height with weight. It's something that a trained professional should determine.

I don't necessarily disagree.

That's funny, because it defines me as being grossly under weight, but whatever. Again, I think body types are varied enough that guidelines like BMI will always be imperfect, and it's certainly valid to question the usefullness of such guidelines.

Well spoken.

I wholeheartedly agree.

While the BMII was designed to make people live healthier lives, it's so inaccurate it does more harm than good, by puting too much emphasis on the connection between weight and general health rather than healthy living.

I think a lot of people think they are healthier than they are simply because they are thin. I've struggled with my weight since I was young. For the past four years I've been going to the gym 5-7 days a week for 1-2 hrs. My eating habits aren't perfect, but I'd say overall I'm very healthy. Despite this, I don't look athletic at all and I am still considered overweight. I cannot count how many times friends of mine with horrible eating habbits that never exercize have tried to give me advice on how to lose weight. And they honestly think they are in better shape than me because they are thinner, even though they never work out and have terrible eating habits!

Grrrr. This is just me being frustrated.

Sometimes skinny people can actually have higher body fat percentages, and those are a lot more indicative of health than BMI.

I define 'Healthy level of physical fitness' as any who is able to fight off a maneating cyborg tiger.

This is in no way tied to my secret plan to unleash hordes of maneating cyborg tigers on the world's cities in order to cure the epidemic of stupid that is plaguing mankind.

I think any sort of generalization about what's healthy and what isn't is inherently flawed. Everyones different in their immune system, build, and certainly in their health. What's great for one person can have the opposite effect on another.

I think people need to find what works for them best, and ultimately, be comfortable in the skin their in.

Read the article again.

An out of shape thin person is more at risk than an active fat person. I eat okay (not super brilliant but okay, luckily too much junk makes me feel ill immediately thus making me have love for the healthy option). I am a little less active than I have been of late but generally like to keep active, walking etc.

And yet that weight just doesn't go anywhere...

The only reason I know I'm supposed to be this shape is because I *used* to date someone who had a serious love affair with junk food and for a while I got sucked into eating too much crap. My health suffered I knew that this was the ill health I was always supposed to have had and I stopped.

Until you have witnessed my eating habits and lifestyle first hand you can keep the condescending bullshit to yourself. Cheers.