With the body mass index redefined to cater to different body types of people that are from different regions of the world, can we depend on the number to determine if we are at a healthy weight? The Academia Sinica is saying otherwise, as they examine further into the study regarding the ideal weight for Asians.

This study investigates Asian people such as Japanese, Taiwanese, Singaporean, Indian, and those from Bangladesh for a total of seven countries.

It is a longitudinal study of millions of people, and it finds that East Asians such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean BMI body mass index compared to the risk of death on this graph, which indicates a U-shaped trend.

For example, a female with a height of 160 cm and a weight between 57-70 kg is the healthiest.

Being more than 89 kg or less than 38 kg, leads to double the risk of death. And for men taller than 170 cm, if they are heavier than 101 kg or weigh less than 43 kg , they are also very unhealthy.

This means they have a BMI between 22.6 to 27.5. However, the results of this study differ from the current Department of Health recommended normal BMI values between 18.5 to 24.

A research fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of Biomedical Science Shen Chen-yang says the DOH standards are too low and should increase.

The report also points out differences between ethnic groups in South Asia ,such as India and Bangladesh, as local public health problems show that many people die of infectious diseases, so the risk of death from being underweight is much higher than obesity.

If another country is used, comparing to Caucasian countries to Asians,

with Asians high level BMI being 27, and Caucasians 24.9.

This shows that Asians may be more tolerant of obesity than Caucasians.

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