The good news: it is important for the young to stay lean, but a little heft helps people live longer, according to a federal researcher at the Gerontology Research Center in Baltimore. The bad news: many obesity and cardiovascular specialists say that lifelong leanness is still the desirable goal. Guidelines on girth have been the subject of a growing dispute since 1983, when the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. updated its charts on desirable weight. The poundage associated with the lowest death rates, the insurance firm found, had risen by as much as 14 Ibs. over such weights in its 1959 tables. Now Dr. Reubin Andres, clinical director of the Gerontology Research Center of the National Institute on Aging, has added more fat to the fire. Using the same data , Andres has concluded that people in their 20s should weigh less than Metropolitan Life indicates, 40-year-olds should weigh about the same, but people in their 50s and 60s can afford to be anywhere from 4 to 37 Ibs. heavier. Andres, a gerontologist who has been studying the effect of weight gain on aging for more than five years, feels that after the age of 20, almost any normally lean person can put on about a pound a year. The Andres study not only challenges the conventional wisdom, it says that men and women of the same height should weigh roughly the same. This relaxed attitude toward weight gain does not find favor with the medical establishment. The American Heart Association has stated that it finds even the 1983 Metropolitan Life table too lenient. Obesity researchers at the National Institutes of Health say that weights 20% higher than the Metropolitan midpoints are hazardous. Says Dr. Robert F. Kushner, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago: “We don’t have anything to gain health-wise by allowing elderly patients to put on another 20 to 30 Ibs., because it’s likely it will be fat tissue.” Dr. William Castelli, director of the 36-year Framingham Heart Study on longevity, declares, “We can show you that for every pound you gain over the 1959 Metropolitan Life tables, your death rate increases 2% over the next 26 years.” Until the doctors can resolve their conflicting interpretations, many Americans will find it prudent to hold back on that second helping of pasta . –By Ellie McGrath. Reported by Patricia Delaney/Washington and Barry Kalb/New York LET THEM EAT CAKE A comparison of desirable weight tables [This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.] Height Men Women 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 4’10” 100-131 84-111 92-119 99-127 107-135 115-142 4’11” 101-134 87-115 95-123 103-131 111-139 119-147 5’0″ 103-137 90-119 98-127 106-135 114-143 123-152 5’1″ 123-145 105-140 93-123 101-131 110-140 118-148 127-157 5’2″ 125-148 108-144 96-127 105-136 113-144 122-153 131-163 5’3″ 127-151 111-148 99-131 108-140 117-149
