Why is it considered unhealthy if someone is overweight even if all their blood tests, blood pressure, etc. all come back at healthy levels?

Question

Assumimg that being overweight is due to fat, not muscle.

In: 1317

Answer 1

Because of the combination of these factors:

* “Unhealthy” and “overweight” are both simplifications of complex things.
* Most people with a high body fat content are at increased risk for many bad health outcomes over the course of their life, even if they don’t currently have any of those outcomes.
* Body fat is very visible and a culturally-loaded signifier.
* Body fat has historic and ongoing connections to culturally important things – food, lifestyle, labor, and sexual attractiveness.

Current research indicates that high body fat beyond a certain range is consistently associated with health risks. There’s a lot of fuzziness about what “beyond a certain range” actually means; there is no hard line and *cannot* be such a line, given what we know about how variable individuals can be. Nevertheless, there is clearly a risk gradient somewhere; being 20 pounds over a given metric might not actually be much (or any) risk, but 100 pounds over is going to very likely be a risk, and 250 pounds over that metric is unquestionably a risk.

Others have pointed out the *nature* of that risk (primarily joint and heart impact, with some stress on other organs as well); but it’s hard to actually quantify the *extent* of the risk that without lots of extra information. We can’t just say, for example, “25 pounds overweight = 10% less healthy”.

So, does that mean that it’s “Unhealthy”? Depends. Culturally, “unhealthy” is only partly related to actual health risks of a given trait/substance/action – and another part is the social perception of that trait/substance/action, as well as a personal-judgement element. For example, most people wouldn’t look at a college football player and naturally call them “unhealthy” despite the well-established health risks of college football. Being a football player is generally a greater health risk than being 20 pounds overweight – but not a greater health risk than being 200 pounds overweight. So which of those things should be considered “unhealthy”? That’s in significant part a subjective judgement.