The Obesity Myth

In his book, The Obesity Myth, author Paul Campos debunks the contention of the major media health alarmists that there is a crisis of obesity in the United States. Here's an excerpt:

Annual Deaths Attributable To Obesity In The United States, which appeared in the Journal Of The American Medical Association (Jama) in 1999, is the source for the endlessly repeated statistic that overweight causes around 300,000 extra deaths in the US every year. (This "fact" has been cited in the major media more than 1,700 times in the past two years alone.) Look at these figures more closely. As Glenn Gaesser, a professor at the University of Virginia points out, studies have consistently failed to find any correlation between increasing BMI and higher mortality in people 65 and over, and 78% of the approximately 2.3 million annual deaths in the US occur among people who are at least 65. Thus, 78% of all deaths lack even the beginning of a statistical link with BMI. "That leaves 500,000 annual deaths in persons under 65 that might be related to BMI," Gaesser told me. "These include deaths from every possible cause: motor vehicle and other accidents, homicides, suicides, cigarettes, alcohol, microbial agents, toxic agents, drug abuse, etc, etc. To think that 60% [ie, 300,000] of these deaths are due to body fat is absolutely preposterous."

It seems a day is not allowed to go by without some sort of health alarm or emergency being reported. They are continuous and ubiquitous and, sometimes, contradictory. I'm sure that anyone who regularly follows the news has become jaded towards health alarms. They are no longer to be believed at face value.

Based upon Campos' book, the health alarms about fat are seemingly more the result of ignorance and politics than solid scientific data. The Obesity Myth is set to be published in the United States next month by Gotham Books.