A few brave researchers in the mainstream scientific community are finally teasing out the truth about fat and associated death risk, rather than painting all fat people with prejudice and one broad brush stroke.
After reviewing nearly 100 studies, involving 3 million adults, Katherine M. Flegal, Ph.D., and colleagues at the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, report that people who are overweight and even obese (with a BMI around 35 or less), have a LOWER risk of death than “normal” weight people and people who fall into the higher obesity ranges. This covers all causes of death.
The truth is starting to trump societal obsession and prejudice about being thin, along with all of the erroneous assumptions that have made the diet and drug industries pockets very fat for so many years! (Read Paul Campos’ wonderful Op-Ed piece about this latest study in today’s New York Times, Our Absurd Fear of Fat.)
To learn more about the Flegal study, click here for the highlights, The Journal of the American Medical Associations News Release. Or read the full study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Association of All-Cause Mortality With Overweight and Obesity Using Standard Body Mass Index Categories: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Clearly, there is so much more we need to understand about why we do and don’t live longer and healthier. But finally, I have increasing hope that the medical truths will be less obscured by judgment of fat and all the meaning people project onto fat bodies.
Thank you Dr. Flegal for continuing to pursue this line of scientific inquiry. Thank you for continuing to debunk long held beliefs and myths and for being the leading voice is this pursuit of the truth!
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Ellen Shuman is a Life Coach who specializes in emotional and binge eating recovery help. She is the founder of A Weigh Out & Acoria Eating Disorder Treatment, Immediate Past President of the Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA), and Co-Founder of the Academy for Eating Disorders Special Interest Group on “Health at Every Size”, ellen@aweighout.com
