New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | May 10, 2005

Drop the chalupa! Cathy Young lets some grease out of the CDC's new report on fat and mortality.

Comments

|5.10.05 @ 5:28PM|#

I questioned the study as well, until I found out that they used the BMI, which, as Cathy points out, is not all that useful when determining whether someone is really overweight or obese. Unfortunately, not everyone realizes that fact. I actually had a doctor tell me that I needed to lose weight, as I am apparently obese by the standards of the BMI. This despite wearing size 38 pants and an XLT shirt. It just got worse when I tried to explain to him about how, given the fact that I lift weights, it's pretty understandable that I weight more than the average person, but he wouldn't have it. All but insisted that I stop exercising in order to drop some weight. At that point, I realized that I would do well to get a new doctor.

|5.10.05 @ 6:13PM|#

Yeah, I emailed the army recruiter and they asked for some info on me. After I sent it off, I got a reply, and they were worried about my weight. Now I could stand to lose a little body fat (I'm maybe 15% right now), but I assured him I was in good shape and the basic training would take care of any extra weight I was carrying. Then I blew them off, so it's not even an issue.

But yeah, that BMI is totally worthless if you actually work out 3+ times per day, especially if you're weight-lifting more than running/biking/etc.

|5.10.05 @ 6:26PM|#

No one, as far as I know, and certainly none of the "gleeful" pundits to whom Cathy Young referred, is arguing that this study means that extreme obesity is not a health problem; she completely misses the distinction between "overweight" and obese that the study specifically made. I haven't read Fumento's article, not being a TNR subscriber, so maybe he makes it clearer, but she also doesn't describe how the flaws he finds in the study's methodology would not just fail to catch weight-related deaths but actually register MORE deaths for the normal-weight. Being almost "underweight" by BMI standards, I'm not personally excited to see these results; I just think it's pretty clear that the science has never conclusively supported the idea that any extra weight is bad.

I'm really disappointed to see this kind of thing at Reason; this has been the one place I've been able to find health coverage that breaks from the simplistic drugs bad/fat bad platitudes that I can find anywhere else.

|5.10.05 @ 7:19PM|#

Does anyone remember a few years ago when they redefined (I think) the BMI standards?

Suddenly people who weren't fat under the old system were deemed to be overweight. I've always wondered if the motivations for redefining this stuff was more politically oriented than health oriented.

|5.10.05 @ 7:22PM|#

Most fitness types I know don't bother with BMI measurements. It's body fat percentage that counts. The optimal range for non athletes is roughly 15-18%, though 19-20% is still pretty good.

|5.10.05 @ 8:37PM|#

To me, the BMI scale is more than a little suspect. A few years ago , I dropped to about 175, had a 32inch waist, and you could see my ribs. According the BMI scale, I was still 23 lbs over my ideal weight.

|5.10.05 @ 9:51PM|#

Strange that the experts who devised the BMI forgot that a cubic inch of muscle weighs more than a cubic inch of fat.

|5.11.05 @ 7:46AM|#

Yeah, 31 inch waist, 46 inch chest, but at around 170 to 174 I'm still "overweight".

|5.11.05 @ 8:42AM|#

E. Steven:

Healthy body fat %'s also vary from male to female.

The BMI is a load of horseshit...thus, any perceived "benefit" from being overweight I blame on the guvmint, for perpetuating the stupid BMI, and using the BMI as a standard in studies.

But, Cathy does sort of gloss over an important factor which has pretty much been undisputably proven true: an active person who is moderately overweight is typically healthier than a normal/skinny person who is sedentary.

I also think she's exaggerating just a tad. I never saw any "punditry" exclaiming that obesity is good for you. And doesn't anyone else find it a little odd that, for all the claims she makes about conservative and libertarian bloggers telling everyone to go eat big macs, she doesn't actually link to a single one of these people?

As another poster notes, she doesn't really make a big distinction between being obese and being overweight. And she really seems to give the fat-nanny tyrants a pretty big pass; the only shit she gives them is a rather modest, "their fears are not completely baseless".

It just seems like she extrapolates this counter-finding into some massive red herring, which goes a 'lil sumpin like deeeisss:

Studies suggested that moderately overweight people have a lower death rate than normal people. But some unnamed, unlinked-to punditry is now supposedly telling everyone to go out and enjoy their steaks and get big and fat. But, this is wrong, because obesity is still a big health hazard.

Does anyone else see the rather large causal disconnect between the first and last assertions? And it's all based on some sort of alleged (unreferenced) celebration of fat? I'm calling major bullshit on Cathy "There are no libertarians in times of war" Young.

|5.11.05 @ 11:52AM|#

To me the most interesting aspect of the study has always been the CDC's reaction to it, as compared to how they would react to a similar outlier survey in the other direction.

|5.11.05 @ 11:58AM|#

A Fistful of Lard is good, but have you seen Yojimbo?

|5.11.05 @ 12:54PM|#

i think she has a point with the whole "nanny nanny poo poo fuck you hippie" thing, however.

|5.11.05 @ 1:07PM|#

The unnamed, unlinked-to pundits are David Brooks and John Tierney in the New York Times. Unfortunately those columns are no longer online for free (all Times articles are transferred to the paid archives after a week), but quotations can be found in this column by Tom Maguire at MSNBC.com.

In a particularly idiotic moment, Tierney interprets the study as license to thumb one's nose at exhortations to exercise.

By the way, my column did initially contain a line about the fact that it's healthier to be moderately overweight and active than thin and sedentary; it had to be cut for length (for the Globe, not Reason.com).

Ampersand|5.19.05 @ 3:36AM|#

With all due respect, Cathy, how could Tierney possibly have been MORE tongue in cheek? It seems to me that you just didn't get it.