Queen Latifah joined hosts Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield-Norris on this week’s upcoming episode of Red Table Talk, where The Equalizer star discussed the difference between health and body size.
In a preview clip of the episode shared by People on Tuesday (June 7), Latifah shared that she recently started working with a “scientific and mathematic” trainer who showed the rapper a chart indicating Body Mass Index, or BMI, which is used to sort people into four categories: underweight, healthy, overweight or obese.
“She’s showing me different body types, and she’s telling me, this is what your BMI is, this is what your weight is, and you fall into this category of obesity,” Latifah explains. “I was mad at that. It pissed me off. I was like, ‘What? Me?’ I mean, I’m just thick. She said you are 30% over where you should be. And I’m like, ‘Obesity?’”
However, Latifah and Pinkett Smith go on to point out that BMI is based on racial and societal biases, as it is calculated based on a person’s height and weight. The “ideal” measurements do not factor in gender or ethnicity, as they are based on the body of a white European man in the mid-19th century.
A large 2003 study that People linked to found that higher BMIs can still be healthy for Black people, but doctors often diagnose them with obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes.
Watch the Red Table Talk clip below, and catch the full episode on Wednesday (June 8) on Facebook Watch.
