Body mass vs. body fat: How often is BMI misleading?

[jacob]

Wow, I didn't realize that the Middle East was so fat. They're right in there(*) with the US group. What does this group have in common? Perhaps access to cheap oil and a general car culture?

(*) Tonga, Samoa, ... being the lead-group, the world's foremost suppliers of rugby players, and a class of their own.

[enigmaT120]

Mauritania.

Weird, my BMI is 24, a hair below the over-weight line. But most men in the U.S. have higher BMIs.

[BRUTE]

Wow, I didn't realize that the Middle East was so fat. They're right in there(*) with the US group. What does this group have in common? Perhaps access to cheap oil and a general car culture?

brute would be surprised if lack of exercise/sedentarism had anything to do with it. some of the thinnest peoples brute has ever seen are lazy as hell and wouldn't know a gym if it fell on their head. exercise might help if a human is on the margin of gaining/losing fat, but not for the majority of people.

brute suspects that it's a rapid change in culture through sudden inflow of wealth and options, food culture being the culprit in particular. the same can be observed in many inuit cultures. they switched rapidly from hunting/fishing societies to an oversupply of burgers and french fries.

while brute doesn't believe in ancestry or paleo'ism as a science (any more), traditions often exist because they do work in some way. when humans throw out their traditions hastily, they sometimes throw out ones that had certain positive effects on some of them - traditions like what to eat when and how.

by the way, brute supports 7wannabe5s idea of waist circumference instead of BMI.

but if brute is honest, humans know when they're fat. they don't need a BMI or a scale. if they stopped lying to themselves, they'd admit it - and if they don't, then they obviously don't care enough, and no measurement will change that.

[zarathustra]

Wow, I didn't realize that the Middle East was so fat. They're right in there(*) with the US group. What does this group have in common? Perhaps access to cheap oil and a general car culture?

(*) Tonga, Samoa, ... being the lead-group, the world's foremost suppliers of rugby players, and a class of their own.

I have several friends who taught english in Kuwait for several years and traveled the region during that time. They say the fatness and diabetes problem has to do with the wealth for sure but moreso the overall attitude of letting children do and eat whatever they want including having mounds of cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They said kids' lunches were shocking; sugar sugar sugar!