No wiggle room when it comes to the ideal weight

WHAT is the healthiest weight to be? People hoping for a little jiggle room may be disappointed — it is the weight already identified by public health experts using body mass index (BMI).

There had been some suggestion that it may be healthier to be pleasantly plump, but the team at the US National Cancer Institute crushed any such idea with a study of 1.5 million adults.

The healthiest BMI is 22.5 to 24.9, they found — at the upper end of where the World Health Organisation, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and other groups have said people should be.