Healthist views about body shape and weight are oppressive and lead to pernicious harms, especially to members of vulnerable groups. 

In the early 20th century, the United States, as an industrialized nation with more food than ever, began to grapple with obesity.

Diagnostic utility of weight and body mass index is widely overestimated, and their use as health and wellness measures can be sources of iatrogenic harm. 

Physicians tend to rely on diagnostic criteria, including BMI, that can influence patients’ access to care, referrals, and insurance coverage for indicated interventions. 

Underlying ideological foundations of stigma and equipment inadequacy include thin-centrism and inadequate representation of fat people in health care organizational leadership.  

Weight loss is not a safe, effective, or permanent method of health promotion, and pharmacotherapeutical approaches pose specific risks to adolescents. 

Although body-mass index is regularly used, it has come under clinical and ethical scrutiny. 

While useful in analyzing population trends in relative body weight, BMI possesses multiple shortcomings when used as an individualized health screening tool.

BMI is part of a range of clinical screening and gatekeeping practices, but historical and current uses reinforce inequity and exclusion.

Before the late 20th century, overweight and obesity were not considered population-wide health risks, but the advent of weight loss drugs in the 1990s accelerated hypermedicalization via BMI use.