Indian food is great. Perhaps too great

IN 1999 Chittaranjan Yajnik, an Indian doctor and researcher, was photographed with his friend and collaborator, John Yudkin, a British professor of medicine. Then in early middle age, both men appear trim and healthy. Indeed, the two had the same “body-mass index”, a widely used if imperfect measure of obesity: 22.3, around the middle of the ideal range. But further testing revealed a stark difference. Body fat made up just 9.1% of Dr Yudkin’s mass. The result for Dr Yajnik was more than twice as high, at 21.2%. This came to be known as the Y-Y paradox and helped popularise the concept of the South Asian “thin-fat” body type.