Hello, I love your site and visit it often for health information.  I have a question about the Body Mass Index guidelines.  I know that the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization have established that the cut-off for overweight is a BMI of over 25 and the cut-off for obesity is over 30.  My BMI currently fluctuates between 24.5 to 25.0 so usually I am a "normal" weight.  Recently, however, I have noticed that some Asian countries have started to lower the cut-offs for overweight and obesity to 23 and 27.5 respectively.  Like all decisions about weight, this has been somewhat controversial and some doctors are questioning this, particularly since many studies have shown that for many Asian populations, the lowest mortality is often in a BMI range between 23.5-24.9, and a few have even shown lowest mortality rates in the 25-30 category. 

 The question I have, and have been completely unable to get a simple answer on, is assuming the validity of these ethnic-specific body mass index guidelines, I have wondered whether the Asian guidelines would be applicable to persons like me of Ashkenazic Jewish descent(Russian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, and Czech to be precise, with some Irish blood thrown in).  I obviously look Caucasian but wonder whether having any possible "Semitic" blood in one's lineage(and I have absolutely no way of knowing what my actual genetic lineage is, any more than most other Jewish persons do) would cause one to come within these newer more restrictive guidelines, being that persons with Semitic" blood would have ties to the Middle East? I have tried in vain to find an answer(and for what its worth, it seems that these newer guidelines, like many obesity markers, may be unduly unfair to many persons of Asian descent). 

  If you could provide me with any information on this, I would be most obliged.  Thank you for your time and assistance in this issue.