This is interesting — the Centers for Disease Control are saying they overstimated the danger of being overweight — and the new figure they’ve come up with for number of obesity-related deaths is less then a tenth the original one.
More interesting — and frustrating — is that no one is planning to publicize the new numbers much, and few people, based on the article, seem even willing to take the possibility they’re accurate very seriously. And yes, this large a change requires a hard look at both numbers. But what I get, yet again, is that no one is willing to comfortable with entertaining the possibility that it might simply be okay to be overweight. Especially if one is reasonably fit.
Much further down in the article, by the way, is another interesting note–that diabetes is up among people in all weight categories. Hmmm … could the cause actually be something other than weight? Like how we eat, or the prevalence of corn syrup in just about everything?
Meanwhile, here’s info suggesting that being a little bit overweight actually has a lower mortality rate than being a so-called healthy weight. Being extremely obese is still a high risk by these figures, but there’s a lot of ground between that and what’s been set as the current standard for a healthy weight.