BMI thresholds for overweight and obesity may not be universally validated across all ethnicities, with risk potentially occurring at lower BMIs in Middle Eastern and East Asian populations.

“do how much is the metric that we use for bmi you know 20 to 25 being perfect 25 to 30 being overweight 30 to whatever it is 40 being obese and then morbidly obese kicks in at some point i'm sure um is that validated on other ethnicities as well yes and no so so with a few exceptions the idea that there is a curve and that it's a generally concave up curve yes although again there are exceptions um but the shape of that curve is not the same in every age race and sex group it does seem that the right side the part where you're getting too high in bmi and risk is going up seems to occur a lot earlier among people of middle eastern and east asian descent”