Letters

Furthering the fat fracas

I am a 50-year-old male. I am 6'4", 220 pounds and an unhealthful 27 on your body mass index ("The Fat Fracas," SN: 5/2/98, p. 283). I am also a professional ski instructor during the winter, a serious rock climber, backpacker, scuba diver, runner, and workout not-quite-fanatic. My blood pressure is average, I have 10% body fat, and my cholesterol is slightly above the midrange of normal. Yet according to the medical profession, I am ready to kick? I don't think so.

Obesity is a serious problem. Spending most of my life in a national park, I see obese people and the problems they face on a daily basis. However, not everyone with a high body mass is fat or unhealthy!

Jerry Anderson
Yosemite National Park, Calif.

Editor's Note: People with a muscular body type may appear to be overweight or even obese on the standard body-mass index chart. Indeed, many professional athletes are classified as too fat using the standard chart.

 -- K. Fackelmann

The body-mass-index table illustrates one reason weight guidelines get ignored: Although the article indicates ratios of 19-25 as ideal, the table shows all values up to 25 as green (good). How credible is a table that puts a 6'2" man weighing 105 lbs. in the green zone?

The body-mass index is also overly simplistic in connecting weight (a volume-related measure) to height (a linear measure), thus demanding that taller people be proportionally much thinner. Although a realistic relationship wouldn't be cubic (taller people aren't scaled up equally in all dimensions), it would certainly be more than linear.

Dick Dunn
Hygiene, Colo.

In the informative article summarizing different points of view about body weight and health, the picture accompanying the sidebar was in direct conflict with the message of the article. Why feature a pencil-thin woman? This picture only reinforces that which scientists are trying to prevent, as described in this article: "The desire to be as thin as a fashion model has triggered an epidemic of life-threatening eating disorders."

Mary Beth Petersen
Brookfield, Wis.

The article on fat said "...women who had gained 22 pounds or more since age 18 ran an increased risk of dying."

No, their risk of dying is still 100%. What is needed is time-related information, such as the disease incidence by age 40 and by age 50, so we can judge the impact on lifespan and quality of life. Otherwise, we get a vague message and end up fighting windmills.

Richard C. Hertzberg
Atlanta, Ga.

 

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