There's so much to unpack beyond these surface-level statistics, though. Like how there's some evidence that the health risks associated with increased BMI are partially an artifact of weight loss diets being
really bad for your health, plus selection bias. People with lower BMIs are significantly less likely to attempt these health-destroying weight loss diets in the first place. Which would then imply that an approach to the issue that focuses primarily on how to get people who are already fat to lose weight, rather than as a prevention-focused public health initiative, may be doing more harm than good.
Or how lumping the overweight and obese groups together is a great example of lying with statistics by gerrymandering the BMI quantiles that seem to be healthiest together with those that have the poorest health outcomes, and away from a group that was arbitrarily defined the better part of two centuries ago based on one person's aesthetic standards rather than any health indicators, most of which weren't even known at the time. In other words, it's the crux of a pervasive piece of statistical circular reasoning.
And the moralizing statements like "normalization of the increasing status quo" that politicize the issue, thereby making it harder to have a nuanced, thoughtful discussion about the topic, and instead push it toward always being yet another pea shooting contest between the "personal responsibility" and "fat positivitiy" caucuses. Which only serves to drown out any attempt to really contend with the full magnitude of the nuances and unknowns that surround this issue.
Or how lumping the overweight and obese groups together is a great example of lying with statistics by gerrymandering the BMI quantiles that seem to be healthiest together with those that have the poorest health outcomes, and away from a group that was arbitrarily defined the better part of two centuries ago based on one person's aesthetic standards rather than any health indicators, most of which weren't even known at the time. In other words, it's the crux of a pervasive piece of statistical circular reasoning.
And the moralizing statements like "normalization of the increasing status quo" that politicize the issue, thereby making it harder to have a nuanced, thoughtful discussion about the topic, and instead push it toward always being yet another pea shooting contest between the "personal responsibility" and "fat positivitiy" caucuses. Which only serves to drown out any attempt to really contend with the full magnitude of the nuances and unknowns that surround this issue.