Being a skinny is much more unhealthy than being fat – new study

BMI is crap

There are many factors that make up weight, BMI just serves to scare people into acting and doesn't do a very good job at that.

We all got to die sometime, some with be in agony because they chose to live an unhealthy existence, some will slip quietly away and the rest because they kept nagging about housework...

Being American and fat is healthy study finds

...sponsored by the Burger Chains of America methinks.

Fat is the new thin then?

SHOCKING REVELATION! HOT NEWS!!!

Lewis Page is being contrary! His article flys in the face of established research, using research which doesn't agree with him when read properly! Reaches new heights of Trolling, or new depths of something else!

We could give up.

With all the conflicting pronouncements from the 'knowledgeable' about health that I've heard across my lifetime I've learned only one thing for certain. With health, outside a few generalisations, we still seem to know bugger all about it.

Here we go again...

I think you may be confusing correlation with causation. Underweight people are probably underweight due to an underlying pathology; that is, they're already ill. Overweight people are likely to be overweight because they eat too much but are otherwise healthy... for the time being.

Morbidity vs Mortality

The 'obesity epidemic' isn't a problem of mortality rates.

It's a crisis because of the massive public healthcare costs associated with managing / treating morbidity from chronic (long term) illnesses, most of which are preventable through sensible lifestyle choices. Most of which also happen to limit obesity.

Nobody in the public healthcare sector worries if you die quickly & cheaply.

Oh, FFS, talk about diddling the statistics to get the answer you want!

Having a look at the abstract, they've just lumped everyone below "normal" into the "underweight" category. There are several underweight categories (very severely underweight is <49kg, severely underweight is <52kg, underweight is <60kg, normal being 60-80kg), just like there are several overweight categories. Of course you'll find that being "underweight" is bad for you if you decide to treat "a couple of kg below normal" in the same way as "malnourished & anorexic" for statistical purposes.

Also, if you're going to decide that the only concerns about obesity are medical conditions that result in death, you're going to miss out (at all points on the spectrum) being able to compare relative actual health, especially when (and here's the important bit) the entire study is based on self-reported information. This wasn't monitored, they weren't checked for other conditions that might relate to their body mass, they just got "A self-administered questionnaire includ(ing) items about respondent smoking and health conditions."

There are problems with BMI, and bigger problems with how parts of the medical establishment use it, but this study is far from the Smoking GNU Lewis misrepresents it as being.

Confused

I may be missing the point but it seems like this report saying that people who are starving to death are more likely to die than people who are well fed?

Yes, BUT

The moral panic was never really about obesity in the first place. That was all just a convenient excuse.

It's about making people feel guilty by convincing them that they have made bad choices, so that they will be less reluctant to give up the freedom to make those choices.

The Government want to be able to tell you what to eat (actually, they want to be able to tell you what to think, but telling you what to eat is just one small part of that). People -- quite understandably -- don't want to be told what to eat. Therefore, the Government have to engage in various levels of subterfuge, until people are ready to crawl through broken glass begging to be told by the Government what to eat.

The BMI is pointless argument is common amongst serious gym goers, but I'm not entirely convinced.

There have been a few studies that show that a trainer who doesn't use steroids can expect to gain lean mass to the point where their Fat Free Mass Index (FFMI), which is their BMI ignoring body fat, is around 25. (The boffins who did the work added a small adjustment, but it's not far off.)

If someone is above this limit then either they're underestimating their body fat (which seems very common), or pumping themselves full of drugs (which can have unfortunate and damaging side effects). The hypothetical bodybuilder with a BMI of 40 is probably rather unhealthy.

So someone of my height (6'3" / 1.9 meters) could expect to build a maximum lean weight of 215 lbs / 88 kg. Working back through the numbers, at a BMI of 30 (108 kg), such an individual would be around 19% body fat, which is getting towards the overweight category. At 117 kg, which gives a BMI of 32.5, body fat would be around 25%, which is considered obese in men.

I reckon that BMI has some merit, and a lot of those who say it doesn't count because they pump iron have a habit of being on the slightly chunky side, despite their impressive biceps.

Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine

Oh dear. get it in the Lancet or the BMJ or something half credible and I may start to believe you. Lewis - go report to Ben Goldacre for a lesson in good science, 'cos this isn't it, for the many reasons described above. Actually, it's not good journalism either, as the source evaluation is shoddy too.

I'm not familiar with the exact journal in question, but most publications with the terms "Family" and "American" in them tend to be of a christian, capitalist, right-wing flavour and have an agenda. That agenda is unlikely to have much in common with impartial health advice.