The recent article by Muntefering et al. (2023) promotes occupational therapy as a tool for the primary prevention of obesity. In this letter, we argue that this article is not only misguided, but also potentially harmful.
First, the authors fail to acknowledge the historical flaws in the obesity literature. Body mass index (BMI) is the primary outcome for most weight-related research. BMI has significant flaws, in particular for racial and ethnic minorities and women, and the American Medical Association no longer supports the use of this metric on its own (Berg, 2023). The lack of a standard and reliable outcome measure makes the obesity literature even more equivocal. Indeed, findings from many studies linking obesity to negative health outcomes have been challenged because of methodological problems (Flegal et al., 2005; Gordon, 2023). More mechanistic research is needed to better understand the relationship between obesity and...
