22 November, 2007
BBC takes small pause in the relentless anti-obesity onslaught
Someone at the BBC has actually gotten half a clue. The mind boggles.
Admittedly, not many clues have been obtained, and certainly not enough to stop the editors putting the usual headless torsos and burger porn shots on the story. But someone has actually noticed the facts don't prop up the relentless anti-obesity rhetoric:
"There is very little evidence to say that being overweight is a signifier of a person or a population's health," he says.
This may sound like heresy but there is good science to back it up. Only this month a study, led by Katherine Flegal of the USA Centre for Disease Control, reported that those who are overweight had no higher risk dying of cancer or heart disease and overall lived longer than those of "normal" weight. You might be surprised at her finding but she was not. "There is actually a large amount of evidence that suggests that the overweight live the longest," she says.
It's certainly not the public health message you normally hear.
# posted by HT : 8:01 pm
