You may have even gone to their website, where you'll find this wonderful gem:
The waist measurements above are recommended for Caucasian men, and Caucasian and Asian women. Recommended waist measurements are yet to be determined for all ethnic groups. It is believed that they may be lower for Asian men. They are also likely to be higher for Pacific Islanders and African Americans (men and women)."African Americans"? Do black immigrants from the United States really make up that large a percentage of our population, or did the government just mean "people of African descent"?
To me, it sounds as if someone indulged in mindless political correctness. Please try harder.
4 comments:
hehe
This one is notoriously common in online fandom when North Americans write about fictional black characters living in Europe, or even in Africa.
I think something slightly more subtle may be going on here: that the health studies they are relying on come from the United States. I have actually looked at some and believe they may use "African American" partly to make it clear what their population is: it's people living in the United States. It's not a given that that data can be extrapolated to all people of black African descent. (In fact, I would guess it's unlikely, given the genetic diversity in Africans.)
However, this isn't wholly consistent: they don't make a similar point for Asians or for Caucasians for that matter.
I would guess the information is authored by an American writer and not completely edited for local appropriateness (as opposed to it being authored by an Australian).
I am curious about why the recommendations do not vary with height, myself. Do people of all heights and builds really have exactly the same waistline risks?
Sure enough, looking all over the net I find quite a lot of different guesstimates of chronic illness risk. Oddly, the ones that talk about waist measurement alone generally have much higher figures than the Aus govt. one (ie, 37 inches, 93cm for women) and various others suggesting that yes, it perhaps may vary with height eg http://calorielab.com/news/2005/06/07/waist-to-height-ratio-best-health-predictor/
So as usual with rule of thumb public health metrics, who the hell knows?
So I'm sure I heard something the other day about fat people in Canada or something having a right to two plane seats for the price of one. Fair enough, I'm sure flying must be intensely uncomfortable for obese people, it's bad enough for tall people.
However, I think if they're going to have rules like that then people like me should either get cheaper tickets or automatically doubled baggage allowance. It's only fair. Otherwise why SHOULDN'T I live on cheeseburgers? Won't cost me any more to get around...
Damnit, if you want people to lose weight, give incentives to small people, not generosity to big people!
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