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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • If this chart is being used solely to represent BMI of a population and is not actually measuring health, it does seem a bit misleading. At the very least, the other comments do seem to be misinterpreting the chart as being representative of the health of a population.

    I’m of course not saying that the US health-wise is any better than the chart represents. Just that as is, the chart is at best useless (except under super niche circumstances) and at worst misleading.


  • BMI alone is not a good metric for populations, unless you also acknowledge the error rate. This study, for example, found that it was very inaccurate when used as a sole measure of obesity. From the abstract:

    Using BMI categories as the main indicator of health, an estimated 74 936 678 US adults are misclassified as cardiometabolically unhealthy or cardiometabolically healthy.

    In a population of around 330 million, that is around a 23% misclassification rate.