University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Sociol Health Illn. 2014 Mar;36(3):338-53. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12050. Epub 2013 Sep 23.
Between the 1970s and the mid-1990s the body mass index (BMI) became the standard means of assessing obesity both in populations and in individuals, replacing previously diverse and contested definitions of excess body weight. This article draws on theoretical approaches from the sociology of standards and science and technology studies to describe the development of this important new standard and the ways in which its adoption facilitated the development of obesity science, that is, knowledge about the causes, health effects and treatments of excess body weight. Using an analysis of policy and healthcare literatures, I argue that the adoption of the BMI, along with associated standard cut-off points defining overweight and obesity, was crucial in the framing of obesity as an epidemic. This is because, I suggest, these measures enabled, firstly, the creation of large data sets tracking population-level changes in average body weight, and, secondly, the construction of visual representations of these changes. The production of these two new techniques of representation made it possible for researchers in this field, and others such as policymakers, to argue credibly that obesity should be described as an epidemic.
在 20 世纪 70 年代至 90 年代中期，身体质量指数（BMI）成为评估人群和个体肥胖的标准方法，取代了先前关于超重的多种有争议的定义。本文借鉴了标准社会学和科学技术研究的理论方法，描述了这一重要新标准的发展，以及其采用如何促进肥胖科学的发展，即关于超重的原因、健康影响和治疗的知识。通过对政策和医疗保健文献的分析，我认为 BMI 的采用，以及与之相关的超重和肥胖标准切点，对于将肥胖定义为一种流行病至关重要。我的观点是，这些措施首先使得能够创建跟踪人群平均体重变化的大型数据集，其次使得能够构建这些变化的可视化表示。这两种新的表示技术的产生使得该领域的研究人员，以及政策制定者等其他人员，能够有说服力地认为肥胖应该被描述为一种流行病。
