According to Japanese law, I'm overweight.

[randomness]

By now you may have heard of the Japanese law that requires companies and local governments to measure the waistlines of Japanese between the ages of 40 and 74. If you haven't, read http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/06/metabo-your-figure-or-your-job.html.

The limits are 33.5 inches for men, 35.4 inches for women.

To give you an idea of how strict that is...*I* barely miss the limit. (Well, if I suck in my stomach, I can pass, but I don't know if that'd be allowed.)

Those of you who have seen me lately can vouch for the fact that I'm not exactly overweight. Nor am I very large. You can gauge from my body shape what their standards require.

Glad I'm not Japanese. They'd be sending me out for mandatory counseling and monitoring.

Comments

It probably has to do with Cardiovascular risk

[mryt-maat.livejournal.com]

The whole apple/ pear body shape thing. Men's risk of CV jumps pretty significantly after a certain ratio between waist/ hips is achieved.

They are probably assuming a certain hip size average for men v. women. Women can have a bigger waist and still have a lower waist/ hip ratio than men- who tend to be more "straight" up and down. Although for the Japanese I'm not sure that applies across the population.

It's a consequence of the same person (the gov) paying for both health care and prevention. The prevention v. cure thing only works in this context.

Could this also be a hating-gaijin thing? 10 years ago, anyway, I was a US size 10 and looked simply enormous against most Japanese people. I'm not sure even now, at my almost-slimmest, I would look "normal" there (although my hips actually are just outside the female waist limit you mention). I realize that it's hard for gaijin or "han" to get into the Japanese health care system, but this would be a clever way to label them unfairly by demonizing non-traditional-to-Japan body types.