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.

BMI is the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters. A BMI of between 25 and 30 is overweight and a BMI of 30 or over is obese.

A person 5 feet 5 inches tall is classified as overweight at 150 pounds (68kg) and obese at 180 pounds (82kg). A person 5ft 10 inches tall weighing 209lbs (95kg) has a BMI of 30 and is obese.

Being overweight or obese raises the risk of heart disease, diabetes, some cancers and arthritis. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, confirms that having a BMI of 25 or more also makes a person more likely to die than someone the same age who is slimmer.

“There is a small increased risk of all-cause mortality associated with being overweight — about 10% compared to having a normal BMI,” Amy Berrington de Gonzalez of the National Cancer Institute, who led the study, said.