What’s the scariest part
of visiting your GP?
For a lot of people,
it's getting on the scales.
GPs nationwide are using the
body mass index as a tool for assessing
someone's health
and a lot of the time,
BMI alone just isn't accurate.
Using BMI to assess health
is fueling a mental health crisis
on body image
that if left unchecked could become
a very serious problem.
Research has shown
that our body image effects
everything from our mood
and ability to socialise
right down to impacting motivation
and sense of worth.
Yet the measurement
we most associate with it
isn't really fit for purpose
and to understand why
we need to rewind.
In the 1830s, Adolphe Quetelet
a Belgian mathematician,
who was working on population
studies, needed a way
to measure the “normal” man.
130 years ago we didn't have computers
or electronic calculators,
so he needed something simple.
His solution was known
as The Quetelet Index.
You take a person's weight
and divide that by their height squared.
From this, that person
is assigned a number.
If that number falls
in a certain range,
that person is considered “normal”.
Nowadays, we know this as the
body mass index, or BMI.
And the formula is still the same.
The issue is that it's 2021
and technology has evolved
since Quetelet's time, yet
we're still using a system that according
to the latest figures,
labels only 34% of the adults
in England as normal.
We know that BMI
is not a perfect measure of health,
and one of the problems,
for instance with BMI,
is that it can incorrectly classify
people as being overweight
or underweight.
For instance, we know that muscle
mass weighs more than fat mass.
So if someone is quite athletic
and they have a lot of muscle mass,
their BMI could appear
as being overweight
where as that person
is actually very healthy
and they have a healthy weight.
The problem is Quetelet's
formula was designed
to be used on European men
as part of a population study,
not to judge their individual health.
It has been argued
that in modern society,
BMI alone does not accurately judge
individual health in ethnic minorities
and its inaccuracy
is particularly present...
in women.
You know someone like
myself like I'm 5ft 9"
and someone my age is meant to be
8 stone that's considered
my healthy weight 8 stone.
I can't imagine being 8 stone.
[laughs] First of all, well,
where is the weight from my hips
on it's own that's 8 stone alone.
I think what's important
with BMI is realising that this
system they have chosen to use.
It's a very unfair system
to judge people on,
people's backgrounds affect
what their bodies look like.
BMI doesn't account
for the different shapes and sizes
human beings come in,
but it's still used as a primary tool
for doctors to assess a person's health.
This is where BMI is doing a lot of harm.
I think that you know being a man
who's had eating problems.
I've always been seen as this number,
and it's never been
an accurate reflection
of my whole health.
I was obviously not very well.
I was unhealthy, but
when I was a normal weight
after gaining weight
from an eating disorder,
I still wasn't feeling healthy
in my mental health.
I was really struggling, but
because my BMI was normal,
I was told that I was healthy again
and so it just shows that it's
a really crude measure of health.
We know that right now
across the country, people with eating
disorders are not accessing
the right treatment, the right support
and are often turned away from services
unless they fit neatly into
an underweight BMI bracket.
But actually eating disorders
aren't about BMI
they're not about weight.
They're not about looking a certain size
or a certain shape,
but they're extremely serious
and extremely complicated
mental illnesses and every single time
we judge someone on their BMI
it puts this whole worth
into that number on the scales
without looking at the whole picture
of that individual.
Weight-based discrimination
is becoming a troubling issue
in healthcare,
the effects of which aren't limited
to those who need help
with an eating disorder.
Every day patients
report symptoms to their GPs
that are being ignored
because of the fixation on their BMI,
leaving people with undiagnosed
illnesses being told
they just need to lose
or gain some weight.
We do know that BMI is just
such an outdated, sexist
kind of way of measuring things,
and it really baffles me
that we still use it actually
and judge someone based
solely on that.
BMI is broken.
We need a system in place
that can accurately evaluate
someone's general health
and stop people facing
weight-based discrimination
when looking for medical help.
People can be very healthy
and be out of that normal range of BMI
and it doesn't take into account
loads of things about somebody's
individual life.
And actually, if we're going to talk
about individual health,
we need to look
at the whole picture of an individual
rather than just a very generic scale.
Because of BMI, 66% of adults
in England are being told
they are not normal.
Judging people by BMI alone is fueling
this mental health crisis on body image.
Here at the
Women and Equalities Committee
we've been researching
the body image crisis
and the factors that are fueling it.
We've only scratched the surface
with the causes of this crisis
with what we've covered in this video.
This research has been carried
out as part of our inquiry,
changing the perfect picture
in which we cover even more about
what can be done
to fix body image concerns
in modern society.
For a more in depth,
look at our research.
You can read our report
summary available here.
Or if you'd like to read our full report,
you can at committees.parliament.uk.
As part of our report,
we've made 17 recommendations
to Government.
We're eager to hear the government's
response, which,
as a House of Commons committee
they're required to provide.