this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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When talking in a clinical sense, I think we need to standardize on a numerical standard, like body fat percentage or BMI. It's my understanding that people want to get away from BMI because it's crude, and I agree, but communicating in numbers will make things less confusing. Healthy body fat ranges depend on race, gender, and age, but it would still be better than using words the public has coopted to become unclear.
This isn't really true. Unless what you're suggesting is that there's a biological component of race, which my understanding no scientist suggests. "Normal" ranges depend on race, but it's not like 1 race is healthier at a different weight than another
https://www.sapiens.org/biology/is-race-real/
While race is mostly a social construct, it's easier to use race as shorthand for "populations with long-term historical ancestry in a loosely defined geographical area, accepting that population mixing has been occurring since the dawn of time and will continue to do so into the future" than it is to say that whole thing every time
BUT, it's my understanding that, for example, Pacific Islanders are generally healthy at a higher body fat percentage than other groups of humans.