ARE HEIGHT-WEIGHT CHARTS BAROMETERS OF HEALTH?
A thin, but sprightly lad may be told by the doctor that he is under-weight since his height and his weight do not measure upto the chart the doctor has before him. The height -weight charts are not, in fact, barometers of health; they are merely averages drawn from a mass of data. Their construction is defective, since nobody has bothered to relate the weight with the state of health. The fallacy lies in taking the average as the ideal. The moment a person’s weight goes above the average, he is advised to reduce it without going into the state of his health. A person having a weight over the average indicated by the actuary’s chart may be in bad health but to take the weight as the criterion of health is wrong. It may be an indication, but not the sole criterion. A healthy man should not, normally speaking, worry about obesity unless it gets out of hand. Nor should a lean, under-weight person lose sight of the need to maintain this condition. Bodily weight is the result of the cells,
