Let us focus on women.

[Suff]

I suspect that nobody knows and that ready meal portions are a guesstimate, at best.

Not true actually. It is an interesting bit of history that the Unions and Aneurin Bevan took the companies who employed the Dock Workers to court for paying a non liveable wage. The companies employed doctors and nutritionists and produced figures and stats which showed the amount of energy needed for a day including work and the food stuffs which gave that energy and the cost of that food.

Bevan and the Unions took the figures from the company nutritionists and turned them into meals on a plate.

The companies lost......

So we already know, because it was decided in court, that for a decent life we need to eat more than our body needs....

Nice eh?

[Suff]

The issue of BMI is a bit misleading.

I see that websites are offering BMI calculators as part of their articles, but the report never mentions it. We do not know what method was used. BMI is nothing more than a rough ready reckoner, but for the vast majority of us it does give a ball park estimate.

Yes, but....

I used the NHS one.

It tells you "how" it calculates and it damned well says that it knows best. Then it has a "Why does this matter" button and it tells me (for the figures I gave it), that I am OVERWEIGHT and I need to lose 1ST 12lb in order to be in the middle of my BMI weight.

If I was 10st 9lb I would be receiving treatment for an eating disorder because when I won the Lincolnshire Youth Club competition at 18 before I joined the Army, also as a member of the Lincoln Wellington Athletics club and winning silver and bronze in track and field at the county level, I was 12st 7lb with a 30" waist.

That website absolutely pushes the fact that it is right and that everyone has to comply with it. It even states that it allows for different body types in the calculation.....

Sorry have to stop now, there is steam coming out of my ears and my brain has ceased to function in indignation....

[Workingman]

Suff you are conflating different things: daily nutritional needs and meals on a plate; with ready made meal portions and the availability of food

Was Bevan the inventor of three square meals a day? You know, a wo/man needs ~2000 calories so three meals of ~700 calories per day? It works so long as that is all a wo/man gets, but today...

There was a time when three square meals was the case. There were next to no food outlets. Some shops would offer a limited range of sweets and bars, but they were treats. However, most 'meals' were prepared in the home with ingredients bought from the butchers, grocers, greengrocers and fishmongers.

Today food is available every hour, anywhere and everywhere, every day of the week. Three square meals no longer exists for most of us. We (over) graze all of the time. We could print calories counts, fat levels, sugar levels and chemical ingredients in huge neon letters on every product and it would make little difference - as would taxing these same things.

We have been programmed, in only a few decades, to eat when we are "hungry" and we are not going to stop. It is not food manufacturers or governments who have made it easy for us to become obese, it is society itself. We should be blaming ourselves not looking for others to take the blame from us.

[Suff]

We should be blaming ourselves not looking for others to take the blame from us.

I am, I am. I blame myself totally. No willpower when it comes to food and the more tired I am the worse it gets....

Week of pain and woe to loose it all again.

Still think they should stop targeting women though. I think they think they have a soft target.

[Workingman]

The issue of BMI is a bit misleading.

I see that websites are offering BMI calculators as part of their articles, but the report never mentions it. We do not know what method was used. BMI is nothing more than a rough ready reckoner, but for the vast majority of us it does give a ball park estimate.

Yes, but....

I used the NHS one.

Suff, the NHS calculator uses the same formulae as others, it is not special.

Divide your weight in kilograms (kg) by your height in metres (m)
then divide the answer by your height again to get your BMI.

It can be done in Imperial measures as well.

If it is crap on one site it will be crap on all others, the only difference is the advice given.

[Suff]

The biggest difference is that it is our health service putting that crap out. The health service turning it into a science and using it as a treatment regimen and, because it is our health service, people are going to believe it.....

Then, of course, there is the advice.....

Some day, some time, there will be a reckoning.

If you have short legs and a long body, tough. BMI is going to hound you for your entire life...

[Workingman]

Mesomorphs, endomorphs and ectomorphs.

All different body shapes and all of them victims of the BMI con. Even so, each individual knows when they are putting on too many pounds or kilos, they do not need a "calculating method" to tell them.

The best indicator is a skirt or trouser waistband.

[medsec222]

Exactly WM - I noticed the same thing when I was putting on my jeans this morning.

[Kaz]

They do say waist size is a far better indicator of health, rather than weight. 32" and below for a woman and 36" for a man, as it is the fat around our middles which is the real problem.

[Workingman]

I just tried five different calculators. Four of them came up with 151.8 lbs, 160.7 lbs, 166.0 lbs and 171.3 lbs, quite a range, the fifth, the WHO BMI came up with a range of 132.6 lbs to 179.2 lbs.

The average of averages is 161.14 lbs or 11 st 5 lbs (73.25 kg)

To lose weight I should eat no more than 1,200 calories per day, and for my mixed (endo/mesomorph) body type my waist should be between 33" and 35" or 84 - 90 cm.

A minefield.