Does fat kill?

January 28, 2003 1:21 PM

Obesity may not be unhealthy after all A careful survey of medical literature reveals that the conventional wisdom about the health risks of fat is a grotesque distortion of a far more complicated story. Indeed, subject to exceptions for the most extreme cases, it's not at all clear that being overweight is an independent health risk of any kind, let alone something that kills hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. [The New Republic online, free reg. required]
posted by tippiedog (24 comments total)

"His numerous studies of the question have found no difference in mortality rates between fit people who are fat and those who are thin." (emphasis added)

That's the crux of it, isn't it? Fit people are more healthly. Although fit and fat are apparently not mutually exclusive, one would think that you are much more likely to be fit if you are thin. [And a minor nitpick with the link title -- if you're obese, then you're not fit, you're just fat.]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 1:29 PM on January 28, 2003

O boy, here we go again...
posted by scottymac at 1:31 PM on January 28, 2003

"According to my calculations, fully three-quarters of National Football League running backs--speedy, chiseled athletes, all of whom, it's safe to say, could beat the world's fastest obesity researcher by a wide margin in a 100-yard dash--are "obese." "

And they drive SUVs, too, the rogues.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:43 PM on January 28, 2003

I'm fat, but I'm not American. Am I safe?

[Oh, and haven't driven a 4x4 since I moved off the farm...]
posted by twine42 at 1:48 PM on January 28, 2003

pass the bacon and mayo sandwich!
posted by quonsar at 1:49 PM on January 28, 2003

Although fit and fat are apparently not mutually exclusive, one would think that you are much more likely to be fit if you are thin.

One would think that, but according to the article, one would probably be wrong. You're more fit if you're reasonably active and don't diet.
posted by Eamon at 1:49 PM on January 28, 2003

Dude, monju_bosatsu, Americans don't like being told thier actions have consequences. We all already know that fossil fuels pollute the planet and that economic imperialism makes people angry enough to fly planes into thier big buildings, and yes, that obesity is unhealthy. We just don't want anyone to talk about it. If we ignore the facts, they might go away. Barring that, we'll pummel them (the facts) into submission. Or shoot the messenger. That always works.
Why do you think we pay thinktanks big money to feed us junk science? Where would we be without junk science? Where would we be without the Cato Institute? God bless the motherfucking Cato Institute.
posted by eustacescrubb at 1:56 PM on January 28, 2003

P.J. O'Rourke (I believe) recently quipped that, if life expectancy and other benchmarks of health continue to improve, no one should care how fat we get.

"According to my calculations, fully three-quarters of National Football League running backs--speedy, chiseled athletes, all of whom, it's safe to say, could beat the world's fastest obesity researcher by a wide margin in a 100-yard dash--are "obese." "

On that note, HBO's Real Sports has been running a segment detailing the health problems of NFL linemen, who consistently weigh in the 300s and recently added a 400 pounder or two, after retirement. Naturally, it seems to be the case that during their career (where they could be described as obese but very fit) health problems are limited (though still perhaps increased) but getting down to a more "acceptable" weight after retirement is viciously difficult.

Or shoot the messenger

Certainly a little more tempting after that lovely diatribe.
posted by apostasy at 2:01 PM on January 28, 2003

Hmmm (looks down)

So fat and sedentary still not healthy?

Rats.
posted by jalexei at 2:02 PM on January 28, 2003

[predicting eustace's flaming to a toasty crisp in 5... 4... (etc, etc... you know the cliche...) ]
posted by twine42 at 2:02 PM on January 28, 2003

Re: linemen's problems getting their weight down after retirement...

A few years ago, a friend's son attended a high school with a highly ranked football team. Depsite the parents' earlier vows that their sons would never play football, they gave in to his requests. Before that, the son was fit and relatively slim. As soon as he started training for football, his weight increased significantly--and not just muscle. I'm sure that at the time he was fit if overweight. He was a lineman, so bulk was important.

But since high school, he's continued to be overweight. While that may not be unhealthy per this article, I don't envy him a lifetime of battling weight (mostly) due, as far as I can tell, to being encouraged to become overweight for the sake of football as a teenager.
posted by tippiedog at 2:08 PM on January 28, 2003

Ok, so if we discount heart disease as a risk of being obese though there is plenty of evidence. What about things like osteoarthritis of the hip and knee. There's always defenders of the America right to be obese and in fact most often obese and lazy, but that comes at a price. Just like alcohol and drug abuse, SUV driving, clear cutting of forests and strip mining, actions made for self indulgence inevitably have consequences. If those costs are outweighed by a jelly donut or piloting the TiVo rather than a more meager diet or exercise so be it but be honest enough to call obseity what it is.
posted by shagoth at 2:37 PM on January 28, 2003

if you're obese, then you're not fit, you're just fat

The term "obese" generally means being 20% or more over your "ideal body weight". It's a measure of how overweight you are, not how fit or unfit you are.
posted by biscotti at 2:51 PM on January 28, 2003

Oh, there's a new medical study every week! Did you know that chocolate causes cancer, oh wait, it decreases the risk, unless eaten with carrots and tapirs, in which case a fresh apricot every day is your only hope?

Cato Institute
Like, Marcus Porcious Cato? Or no? Ok, ok.
posted by ac at 3:08 PM on January 28, 2003

oops, wrong thread about the tapirs. but my point still stands!
posted by ac at 3:12 PM on January 28, 2003

Dude, monju_bosatsu, Americans don't like being told thier actions have consequences.

In my experience, just the oposite is true: Americans can't handle being told that their actions do not have consequences. Witness our response to being told that being fat is (a) not necessarily a sign of a lack of moral fiber and (b) not really all that important. You'd think this'd be good news, but people respond like something's been taken away from them.
posted by hob at 3:19 PM on January 28, 2003

"If researchers observe that fat people are more prone to contract, say, heart disease than thin people, this fact by itself doesn't tell them whether being fat contributes to acquiring heart disease. It could easily be the case that some other factor or set of factors--i.e., being sedentary or eating junk food or dieting aggressively--contributes both to being fat and to contracting heart disease."

So it's not the fat that's bad for you. It's the overeating. Thanks for clearing that up.
posted by spotmeter at 3:23 PM on January 28, 2003

spotmeter, you can get fat on both a nutritious diet and a poor one. They are saying that heart disease might be caused more by lack of nutrients rather than over abundance of calories.

Which makes me realize nutrition might be the reason that American are consuming more than ever. People over seas don't seem to consume the shear volume of food that we Americans consume. Since your body gives you cravings based on nutrient requirements, we may be misinterpreting the signals. They are telling us, "Need more B vitamins eat more meat!" However, instead of actual nutritious meat, we go get ourselves another Big Mac[tm]

I wonder if there's been any studies on that.
posted by betaray at 3:47 PM on January 28, 2003

Just ate a bacon double cheeseburger, super sized fries and a biggie shake. I'm feeling healthier already.
posted by rks404 at 4:21 PM on January 28, 2003

//predicting eustace's flaming to a toasty crisp in 5... 4...//

So far, I'm disappointed, twine42.

//people respond like something's been taken away from them//

Or like someone's tried pull something wooly over our eyes.
posted by eustacescrubb at 4:48 PM on January 28, 2003

"Just ate a bacon double cheeseburger, super sized fries and a biggie shake."

Don't bother to let us know how it comes out.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:52 PM on January 28, 2003

Well jeez, smoking doesn't kill you either, it's the CANCER that does.

I hate stupid "medical studies" that show us complete shite.
posted by padraigin at 5:19 PM on January 28, 2003

Woohoo!

Maybe if I show this article to my wife she'll leave me alone about losing weight.

Nah -- probably not...
posted by jdroth at 5:46 PM on January 28, 2003

If you read the article, you'll see that this has nothing to do with saying that people shouldn't eat healthy and exercise, and everything to do with saying, simply, that correlation != causality.

From the article: "In other words, while lifestyle is a good predictor of health, weight isn't: A moderately active fat person is likely to be far healthier than someone who is svelte but sedentary." "...there is in fact no medical basis for the government's BMI recommendations or the public health policies based on them. The most obvious flaw lies with the BMI itself, which is simply based on height and weight. The arbitrariness of these charts becomes clear as soon as one starts applying them to actual human beings." "...the research providing the basis for the claim that fat contributes to the deaths of 300,000 Americans per year--a 1999 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)--did not attempt to control for any confounding variables other than age, gender, and smoking. " "Perhaps the most comprehensive survey of the literature regarding the health risks of different weight levels is a 1996 study by scientists at the National Center for Health Statistics and Cornell University. This survey analyzed data from dozens of previous studies involving more than 600,000 subjects. It concluded that, for nonsmoking men, the lowest mortality rate was found among those with BMI figures between 23 and 29, meaning that a large majority of the healthiest men in the survey would be considered "overweight" by current government standards. For nonsmoking women, the results were even more striking: The authors concluded that, for such women, the BMI range correlating with the lowest mortality rate is extremely broad, from about 18 to 32, meaning that a woman of average height can weigh anywhere within an 80-pound range without seeing any statistically meaningful change in her risk of premature death. " "Lost in the uproar over the JAMA study's 300,000 deaths figure is the peculiar fact that the report actually found that supposedly "ideal-weight" individuals with a BMI of 20 had essentially the same mortality risk as "obese" persons with BMI figures of 30 and that both groups had a slightly higher mortality risk than "overweight" people with BMI figures of 25."
posted by biscotti at 5:56 PM on January 28, 2003