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Comment by wiether | Hacker News Reader

You got me in the first half.

I actually thought you were preaching the same thing as the ones you are criticizing later on.

I agree that there is people with a high BMI that are quite healthy. So this is not a perfect indicator of health. Sure. But those people are a minority. At the scale of a country of ~346 millions people, having 3/4 of adults with a high BMI is a clear sign of an unhealthy population.

And, yes, unfortunately, some people decided that, because BMI doesn't work with a minority, we shouldn't care about it and, furthermore, shouldn't care about body composition.

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Exactly this. Athletes are an outlier when it comes to BMI.

Furthermore, I reckon the majority of the people discussing BMI, as in these comments, would tend to be outliers, too, based solely on the fact they care/understand.

The majority of the population has no fucking clue, and can’t even read nutrition labels. And I am not blaming them. This stuff should be taught in school—basic nutrition education.

And even most athletes I personally know fall under what's considered a healthy BMI (< 25). Some sports require a body composition that pushes the boundary of it but as a general proxy of the health of millions in a population it's a pretty good one.

I will disagree here, athletes aren't the only one who can have a BMI > 25 and still be healthy, I'm at 26.2 now (down from 34) and my body fat is in the healthy range. BMI is actually just a poor indicator, hip/waist ration is as easy to calculate and is better imho.

Hip to waist is probably better but it has flaws as well. Especially in those who have lost a lot of weight and now have a lot of extra skin still there. No measure covers everything. You have to look at it in a holistic way. You can always use water tests to get lean body ratio if you’re super into it. Generally more important is how much is lean mass, how are your vital signs, what does your blood work show. Then one is getting closer to actually knowing how healthy someone is. A person 100lb overweight can be arguably healthier than someone who is 100lb lighter but has organ issues or high blood pressure or type 1 diabetes.

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