Welcome to Debate Club! Please be aware that this is a space for respectful debate, and that your ideas will be challenged here. Please remember to critique the argument, not the author.

Is it really all that bad to be slighly underweight?

2»

Replies

  • BartBVanBockstaele
    BartBVanBockstaele Posts: 623 Member
    edited November 2022
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    I understand from your posts here that you went through medical education a few decades back. I'm thinking you may not have IT experience?
    That is a reasonable assumption, but it is wrong. I actually have over 40 years of IT experience, as a programmer, and if you look on the Internet, you will discover I have written a number of published books on the subject (that's a quite a while ago).

    As for screening tools, they are ways to deal with populations, not individuals. It is the type of thing that is used, for example, to determine whether or not people potentially qualify for drug trials. If they don't pass the screening, they are not considered. If they do, they are interviewed and if they pass that stage, they are invited for a medical examination. Only after that, are they possibly included.

    Screening is a way to make an expensive and/or difficult process simpler. Nothing more.

    For the rest, unfortunately, it *is* necessary to repeat certain things ad nauseam. One of my favourite examples of that is homœopathy. Even though it was debunked almost as soon as it was created, in the late 1700s, We *still* have to instruct people on why this is nonsensical quackery and there are *still* people dying because they believe in it anyway.

    Something similar is the case with BMI. It was created by a 19th century Belgian statistician. Yet, so many people, especially in the English-speaking world, are still applying it in the wrong way. That is what lack of science education does to people.

  • BartBVanBockstaele
    BartBVanBockstaele Posts: 623 Member
    edited November 2022
    <snip>
    MFP may have cut out its calculator, who knows why - but BMI calculations certainly havent been cut from websites such as Heart Foundation nor has it stopped being used in places like GP surgeries.

    https://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmi-calculator
    (It's under "Apps" - along with other useful tools. :) )
    It is good that you try to verify claims. But, it is only good if you read all the information, not just a part of it:
    ad3kybnw8dat.jpg


    Oh, for Pete sake.

    I linked to the STILL WORKING TOOL.

    No need to come here and correct me. I don't use the (still available) tool, I just use the NIH one. Your post is written in quite the condescending tone and was not necessary - but thanks for playing.

    In that case, we both seem to have interinterpreted each other's intentions. I apologise for that. Condescension was not the intention.