173cm tall, 75kg is obese..."The BMI should raise the bar for obesity".

[Anchor]
It is usually a BMI scale that divides weight by the square of height to distinguish whether you are obese or not.

Eating habits and lifestyle have become westernized, but a study found that Koreans' BMI obesity index is too low and the standard should be raised.

Reporter Kim Joo-young reports.

[Reporter]
If you exercise to take care of your health, you can easily encounter BMI and body mass index.

It distinguishes between underweight and normal or obese by obesity height and weight of 25 or more, and if it is 25 or more, it is classified as obese.

According to this method, men are 173cm tall and 70kg are overweight, and 75kg is obese.

Based on the national average height, it is normal for men to stay in the 60kg range at 173cm and women in the 50kg range at 160cm.

As a result, it is concluded that many of the people are obese.

[Choi Kyung-mi / Former professor of Seoul National University (last 2022): We often call it obese with a BMI of 25 or higher. 47% of all men have obesity rates.

If this criterion is met, the incidence of various adult diseases should also increase rapidly in the BMI 25 section, but the reality was different.

The National Health Insurance Corporation's Health Insurance Research Institute followed 8.4 million adults for 21 years and found that the risk of death was the lowest in the 25th section.

In addition, cardio-cerebrovascular diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes also showed the greatest risk of occurrence at higher levels.

For this reason, experts suggested that it is appropriate to raise the domestic obesity standard from BMI 25 to 27.

In this case, men must be 173cm in the 80kg range and women must be 160cm in the 70kg range to become obese.

[Lee Sun-mi / Director of Health Care Research Center, Health Insurance Research Center: Increasing BMI may be a problem, but based on the result of higher risk of disease in section 27 (than BMI 25) compared to other sections....]

In the case of overseas, the World Health Organization considers BMI 30 or higher, and in China, 28 or higher are considered obese.

Based on the results of this study, health authorities and academia are expected to decide whether to apply it in Korea after further discussions.

I'm Kim Joo-young of YTN.