It might be inaccurate, but at least it's fast

An article today at Slate discussing Body Mass Index (BMI) and how it's actually a poor measure of obesity -- and why it's used so commonly to diagnose said obesity. Rather like many population measures -- time at menarche or onset of puberty, age at death, literacy, whatnot -- the overall averages won't tell you what's going on with any given individual. But alas, the almight BMI is convenient, so it's commonly used.

This reminds of the (related) phenomenon, back during the Atkins Diet craze, when I read an article talking about it and its actual relationship to healthy eating and longevity (questionable at best, negative at worst). It quoted some scientists as arguing that at least Atkins brought people's attention to dietary questions; in my experience, however, it was just another fad diet, and people adhered to it specifically. There was little spillover into more generalized health concerns, exercise, etc., just cutting down on carbs -- which as many scientists in that article and out pointed out, is not terribly related to long-term health, as the fats associated with much of the protein people ate instead did little for their cardiovascular health, and they missed out on the nutrients and micronutrients chiefly gleaned from eating complex carbs (i.e. the anti-Wonder Bread).

Anyway, like BMI or even worse our focus mainly on weight, the article expressed a point of view that I like to summarize as, "Things are so bad, we need a solution -- even if it's a wrong one that won't work."

Sigh.

Am I on to something?

A thought just occurred to me, and I wanted to get it down quick before I went back to studying. I've been reading about a specific kind of nonparametric statistical testing, resampling, which led me to thinking about false positive and false negatives (Type I & II errors), which *somehow* made me think of food allergies (somehow I ended up at the Wiki for phenylketonuria, don't know how that one happened), and reminded me of hearing Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food recently. Any road, I feel like I can't've been the first person to think of this, but there's been much talk of growing rates of food allergies and other maladies, and various possible factors, like growing up in too-antiseptic environs and pesticides and such. Which may indeed have a part in it; but it reminds me of Pollan's simple admonition on how stay healthy, "Eat whole food, not a lot, mainly fruits and vegetables." Part of this -- the whole foods part -- is not a product placement, but rather advice to avoid processed foods (which he talks about in Omnivore's Dilemma, and possibly IDoF as well). Processed foods, besides having extra fat and salt to make up for the taste-reduction resulting from processing perfectly good food into O-shapes and for shelf life, also many times include label ingredients (Now with Vitamin C! And retsin! And Omega-3-fatty acids!!!!) that reflect today's understanding of the nutrients we need (and aren't getting). Pollan's point in respect to this was what he calls "Nutritionism" -- the idea of food as medicine, to deliver specific benefits. The problem is that we really don't understand food -- wild admixtures of chemicals they are -- and exactly how these nutrients work together. Turns out a lot of them (nutrients) don't work in their isolated forms -- or at least work better when they're in their original "delivery good," i.e. a fruit or a fish. That is, omega-3 in, say, yogurt, doesn't seem to work the same or nearly as well as omega-3 in, say, the fish it came from.

Perhaps besides from lowering their efficacy, all this separating out and dosing of processed foods with exotic and/or heavily re-processed and purified nutrient isolates, as well as all the derived flavor/color/etc. isolates, is part of the problem. That is, as part of its whole, original food given potential allergens wouldn't be recognized as such, but isolating and re-introducing them into different food contexts decreases the body's adaptive mechanisms of recognizing appropriate and not-appropriate antigens? (Or simply, perhaps, the number of spices and veggies that we're not eating as much and instead are getting in processed or nutrionized extract forms are undermining various and many yet-to-be-understood detox pathways? Cf. aflatoxin and apiaceous vegetables?)

I may be off base, or maybe onto something I'm not enunciating well. Or maybe I'm crazy like a fox... in any case, gotta go.