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Boys overweight, girls under: doctors

Going through the health checkup reports of almost 4,000 university students, Taipei City hospital doctors found that more boys suffered from obesity while more girls were underweight.

The study of 3,996 freshmen at National Chengchi University was collected by the hospital's chief general practitioner, Guo Kuan-liang (郭冠良).

Guo considered a body mass index (BMI) of 27 or above to be obese and a body mass index of 18.5 or under to be underweight. According to these standards, while only 7.4 percent of the student body were obese, 13.2 percent of male students were obese.

Also, 15.7 percent of the overall student body could be considered underweight, with 22.1 percent of females being underweight.

The results are not surprising, said Hsiao Tun-jen (蕭敦仁), a gastroenterologist who specializes in obesity.

"I see a lot of young female patients who want to lose weight despite being quite healthy, and even slim," Hsiao said.

"When I ask them how slim they want to be, they always say `as skinny as possible,'" he said.

Hsiao blames the ubiquitous presence of extremely skinny celebrities and models for influencing women's perceptions of an appropriate and attractive weight.

"I once had a patient who was 160cm tall and weighed 50kg," Hsiao said. "She wanted to lose 5kg more so that she would look like Jolin Tsai (蔡依林)."

Instead of treating women who do not have obesity problems, Hsiao said he shows them statistics from England showing that men find women with a BMI of between 19 and 20 most attractive.

Despite the desire of some young women to be extremely skinny, the rate of anorexia is substantially lower in Taiwan than in countries such as the US, said Tseng Mei-chih (曾美智), an attending psychiatrist at National Taiwan University Hospital.

"I don't think the weight data from university students is cause for concern. A BMI of 18.5 is on the low end of what we consider a healthy weight," Tseng said.

"For a long time we did not have proper figures for the rate of anorexia and bulimia in this country," Tseng said. "Last year's figures showed that about one in 1,000 girls are anorexic, while one in 100 girls are bulimic."
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