"Obesity" Kills 400,000 -- Or Is It 25,814?
“All truth passes through three stages...
First it is ridiculed.
Second it is violently opposed.
Third it is accepted as being self-evident."
~ Schopenhauer
We have not been getting the whole truth about fatness. This may be because "obesity" research is significantly biased, a fact that is well documented in books such as Losing It by Fraser; Big Fat Lies by Gaesser; Dispensing with the Truth by Mundy; The Obesity Myth by Campos, and others. Yet healthcare professionals, the government and diet industries continue to recommend weight loss diets to those even a few pounds over the arbitrary "desirable" body weight standards.
Will they continue to push weight loss? Well, 400,000 people die of "obesity" each year, right? That's a lot of people at risk. At least that is what the Centers for Disease Control has been declaring.
But experts found serious problems with those calculations , and demanded the CDC re-examine their statistics and research analysis. Finally, the CDC did exactly that, and guess what? There was a little mistake!
Oops. The actual number of deaths attributable to "obesity" is only 25,814, not 400,000!
Oops. People defined as overweight had a lower risk of death than people of normal weight!
What!?
It's true.
Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by the CDC's own epidemiologists confirmed that claims that weight is a health issue are greatly over exaggerated. In fact, this new study, perhaps the most thorough of its kind, shows quite clearly that the relationship between weight and mortality is nonexistent for most overweight people.
They did find, however, that being underweight was associated with 33,746 excess deaths! Being underweight is unhealthy!
Perhaps healthcare professionals, the government, and diet industries should quit promoting weight loss to the majority of Americans!
Here's an idea: Commit to learning more about how obesity research is biased so that you can become more skeptical when media frenzy makes it look like we are all about to die from four extra pounds. Commit to learning how fatness and higher weights are not necessarily unhealthy, and how thinness is not necessarily healthy. Read Big Fat Lies, The Obesity Myth, Losing It and/or Dispensing With the Truth, available at gurze.com or amazon.com. Or read Chapter 2 of my book, Moving Away From Diets, which reviews "obesity" research.
About Eating Wisdom and Drs Karin and Hannah
We are two PhD level Registered and Licensed Nutritionists whose passion is to help others escape diet culture and to learn to use their natural, innate Eating Wisdom to, finally, find peace with food, eating and weight.
Check out our course, Intuitive Eating: How to Escape Diet Culture and Become an Empowered Eater,. plus we have lots of info and handouts (including the original Hunger Fullness Scale) at our website, www.EatingWisdom.com. We also offer 1:1 nutrition therapy. Take advantage of our combined 40+ years of experience and reach out today!
© 2012 Karin Kratina, PhD, RD, LDN and Amy Tuttle, RD, LCSW