Why do flags flap on a windy day?
Believe it or not, this is just one of many questions science cannot surely resolve. There are others: What is gravity? Why do we dream? How many species inhabit our planet? Why is it that the freeway lane I choose is always the slowest? (Okay, in all fairness, I really doubt if scientists spend much time on the last question.)
Each of us has unanswered questions.
Since my field is health, I’ve often wondered why is it that we determine someone’s correct weight based on the Quetelet Index of Obesity, a formula dating back to nineteenth-century Europe? Granted, about a century later we shifted to Body Mass Index (BMI), which is weight divided by height squared. Yet the main premise remained in tact: how tall you are is virtually the sole factor to determine how much you should weigh.
That has never made sense to me. Why would a 5’ 6” forty-four year old vegan woman who enjoys yoga and jogs with regularity; and a sedentary man of equal stature who scarfs red meat, French fries, and drives his car 100 yards to the corner store; be considered healthy at the same weight? I have always thought something’s messed up.