Not long after a study revealed that 25 percent of elderly Koreans eat by themselves all the time, making them vulnerable to depression, a new report claimed Tuesday that a clear correlation exists between lone diners in their 20s and the obesity rate in that age group.

According to a research team led by professor Jang Sung-in of Yonsei University College of Medicine, those eating alone had a higher chance of having a higher body mass index, and this especially stood out in Koreans in their 20s and 30s.

BMI is a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters, and serves as a yardstick to indicate a person’s body fat mass. According to co-researcher Lee Sang-a, Koreans with a BMI of 25 or higher could be considered obese, while the average BMI for those in the study in their 20s was 22.76.

Jang’s study took samples from some 13,300 people over the age of 20 who took part in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 2013 and 2015.

In Jang’s research, those who ate alone had a higher BMI by 0.39 points on average, meaning that regardless of one’s gender, lone diners weighed 1.2 kilograms more than those who ate in others’ company. Especially in the 20s age group, the BMI of lone diners was 1.15 points higher on average when compared to their peers who ate with others. A similar trend was noted in the 30s age group, where lone eaters had a BMI score higher by an average of 0.78 points.

Jang said his research provides basis for further study to prove that people who eat alone may often decide on nutritiously unbalanced meals.

Jang’s research had taken into consideration the total calories consumed by each person, and concluded that what affected a person’s obesity rate had more to do with the types of food and nutritional value of meals than actual caloric intake.

Eating alone, also known as “honbab” in Korean, has become a fad in recent years in line with an increasing trend in one-person households and surge in TV show programs showing celebrities dining by themselves.

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)