Another bit of good news

Well, for some of us, anyway. Courtesy of Wednesday's New York Times.

People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight, federal researchers are reporting today.

The researchers - statisticians and epidemiologists from the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - also found that increased risk of death from obesity was seen for the most part in the extremely obese, a group constituting only 8 percent of Americans. ...

The new study, considered by many independent scientists to be the most rigorous yet on the effects of weight, controlled for factors like smoking, age, race and alcohol consumption in a sophisticated analysis derived from a well-known method that has been used to predict cancer risk. ...

Some saw the report as a long-needed reality check on what they consider the nation's near-hysteria over fat. ...

Others simply did not believe the findings. ...

In fact, the new study addressed the risk only of death and not of disability or disease. There has long been conclusive evidence that as people move from overweight to obese to extremely obese, they are more and more likely to have diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.

But the investigators said it was possible that being fat was less of a health risk than it used to be.

Or maybe it was never as much of a risk as it was made out to be and the risks are truly relevant only to that most obese 8% of Americans, whose results distort the picture for the rest of the folks on that side of "normal."

Dr. Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California, had another perspective.

"The take-home message from this study, it seems to me, is unambiguous," Dr. Glassner said. "What is officially deemed overweight these days is actually the optimal weight."

Personally, I think Dr. Glassner has nailed it.