Her co-host Hobbes then added that, given medical progression has come so far, there’s no need to allow people’s weight to dictate the health markers you can’t see. “We’re using BMI as a proxy for underlying data when the underlying data is there. If you say you don’t want people to be fat because they might have a bad resting heart rate, why not just take their resting heart rate? It’s there, you’re in a doctor’s office.”

He also added a crucial point about weight stigma and medical bias being the reasons that people in larger bodies may have more serious health complications. “There are very severe health effects that nobody looks into because they’re like ‘oh you’re fat, I’m not going to run these tests, I’m not gonna give you an MRI, I’m not gonna listen to you… There is a correlation between higher BMI and worse health and some percentage of that is the fact that life threatening illnesses in fat people do not get diagnosed.”

“Humans are diverse on every dimension, including the size they’re best suited to be. It’s not an academic issue that this was only done on white people. It’s a epidemiological issue, we’re getting shitty data by applying this to everybody.”

And if that isn’t enough reason to focus on true health rather than aesthetics, we don’t know what is.

BMI: this podcast exposes the history of BMI (and why it’s really not fit for purpose)