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>rather than a medically-established ideal weight range Is it really "abstract thinking" to accept an arbitrary "medically-established ideal weight range"? Sho

>rather than a medically-established ideal weight range Is it really "abstract thinking" to accept an arbitrary "medically-established ideal weight range"? Shouldn't we evaluate the criterion set by the medical community too before we accept it? I hear constant criticism of the BMI system for determining healthy weights, yet I've never really known another standard system. While I agree that it's bad to compare your chubby kid to the obese kids and write off the weight problem because fatter children exist, I'm not sure how far we should run with the insistence on conformity to numbers like BMIs. If my children are in the "overweight" BMI range (which isn't applicable to them yet as both are under two) but I still feel that they've been exercising, eating well, etc., and are generally healthy, I'm not going to sweat it.

JonnieCache 15y ago
>Is it really "abstract thinking" to accept an arbitrary "medically-established ideal weight range"? It is abstract thinking as opposed to concrete thinking, because you are imagining a hypothetical child with a certain build, (or is it a set of children with a range of healthy builds?) and comparing your child to that, as opposed to simply comparing your child to the other children you see in front of you every day when collecting your child from school. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_object http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_object
- cookiecaper 15y ago
  Well, your link lists concepts like "Five" or "Justice" as abstract, so the entire concept of "overweightness" instead of just "overweight child" is "abstract" by that measure. I guess I assumed you meant something more meaningful and less pedantic. And I don't think there's much of a leap in terms of abstraction if you just jump from "compared to the other kids, my kid is ok" to "compared to this number on a chart, my kid is ok". That is just a change in what data point you prefer to reference, not a change in thought patterns.
king_jester 15y ago
This is a key point. BMI by itself is not an accurate indication of a person's health. I often see discussions freely interchange being overweight with being unhealthly, even though we only have data for some types of health conditions correlating with higher body weight. To my knowledge, there is no single score or data point that can be used to accurately assess an individual's health.
- quanticle 15y ago
  >I often see discussions freely interchange being overweight with being unhealthly, even though we only have data for some types of health conditions correlating with higher body weight. It's true, not all health conditions are correlated with being overweight. However, a good many of the deadliest health conditions, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes are very well correlated with weight. Saying we should discount the effect of weight on health because my weight doesn't predict my susceptibility to car accidents strikes me as misguided. >To my knowledge, there is no single score or data point that can be used to accurately assess an individual's health. That's true, but it's also meaningless. There isn't a single score that allows you to predict everything. But, for most people, BMI correlates quite well with the "big-three" medical ailments: heart disease, stroke, cancer. I think that's valuable enough.
  - onemoreact 15y ago
    Slightly overweight 40+ year old people live longer than underweight or overweight people. Ideal weight vs Overweight is fairly even with some study's showing slightly overweight being heather. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.c7aaeb7940626693fa418a1eab2291f6.81 http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.c7aaeb7940626693... http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2009/06/portland_researchers_find_slig.html http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2009/06/portland_... PS: This difference could be social vs physical with more active people taking more risks in their daily lives.
  - king_jester 15y ago
    > Saying we should discount the effect of weight on health because my weight doesn't predict my susceptibility to car accidents strikes me as misguided. It's not my intention to make such a statement. BMI does have a usage, but it's more nuanced that most people realize and I wished to point that out. > But, for most people, BMI correlates quite well with the "big-three" medical ailments: heart disease, stroke, cancer. Do you have any more information or citations for this? It was my understanding that BMI alone was not enough of a predictor for certain ailments and conditions and that usually medical professionals also look at additional risk factors in conjunction with BMI, such as family history or habits like smoking.

JonnieCache 15y ago

>Is it really "abstract thinking" to accept an arbitrary "medically-established ideal weight range"? It is abstract thinking as opposed to concrete thinking, because you are imagining a hypothetical child with a certain build, (or is it a set of children with a range of healthy builds?) and comparing your child to that, as opposed to simply comparing your child to the other children you see in front of you every day when collecting your child from school. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_object http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_object

cookiecaper 15y ago
Well, your link lists concepts like "Five" or "Justice" as abstract, so the entire concept of "overweightness" instead of just "overweight child" is "abstract" by that measure. I guess I assumed you meant something more meaningful and less pedantic. And I don't think there's much of a leap in terms of abstraction if you just jump from "compared to the other kids, my kid is ok" to "compared to this number on a chart, my kid is ok". That is just a change in what data point you prefer to reference, not a change in thought patterns.

king_jester 15y ago

This is a key point. BMI by itself is not an accurate indication of a person's health. I often see discussions freely interchange being overweight with being unhealthly, even though we only have data for some types of health conditions correlating with higher body weight. To my knowledge, there is no single score or data point that can be used to accurately assess an individual's health.

quanticle 15y ago
>I often see discussions freely interchange being overweight with being unhealthly, even though we only have data for some types of health conditions correlating with higher body weight. It's true, not all health conditions are correlated with being overweight. However, a good many of the deadliest health conditions, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes are very well correlated with weight. Saying we should discount the effect of weight on health because my weight doesn't predict my susceptibility to car accidents strikes me as misguided. >To my knowledge, there is no single score or data point that can be used to accurately assess an individual's health. That's true, but it's also meaningless. There isn't a single score that allows you to predict everything. But, for most people, BMI correlates quite well with the "big-three" medical ailments: heart disease, stroke, cancer. I think that's valuable enough.
- onemoreact 15y ago
  Slightly overweight 40+ year old people live longer than underweight or overweight people. Ideal weight vs Overweight is fairly even with some study's showing slightly overweight being heather. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.c7aaeb7940626693fa418a1eab2291f6.81 http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.c7aaeb7940626693... http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2009/06/portland_researchers_find_slig.html http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2009/06/portland_... PS: This difference could be social vs physical with more active people taking more risks in their daily lives.
- king_jester 15y ago
  > Saying we should discount the effect of weight on health because my weight doesn't predict my susceptibility to car accidents strikes me as misguided. It's not my intention to make such a statement. BMI does have a usage, but it's more nuanced that most people realize and I wished to point that out. > But, for most people, BMI correlates quite well with the "big-three" medical ailments: heart disease, stroke, cancer. Do you have any more information or citations for this? It was my understanding that BMI alone was not enough of a predictor for certain ailments and conditions and that usually medical professionals also look at additional risk factors in conjunction with BMI, such as family history or habits like smoking.