a controversial perspective on obesity

[jrtom]

http://www.obesitymyth.com/excerpt.html

http://www.bigfatblog.com/columnists/archives/001240.php

Hmm. I should probably read more about this.

A thought that has occurred to me in this context: as long as we have death, there will always be a leading cause of it. (This is true of any phenomenon, of course.) This is kind of obvious when you put it that way, but what this means is that it's not entirely obvious that something being "the leading cause of death"--which obesity-exacerbated health issues might even be--should mean that we all have to drop everything and do all that we can to reduce that risk.

I do get the feeling that the author might be confusing a couple of things here. It may indeed be the case that the mortality rate among overweight people and thin people is the same for a given level of exercise. This doesn't necessarily mean that being overweight can't make some health issues worse, or give you a greater risk of acquiring others.

Comments

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

see tildequinn's comment below, and my response.