The "overweight" lie: where's the outrage?

People ought to be outraged by the lies being perpetrated by our government. No, I’m not talking about WMD in Iraq, I’m talking about the lies about what your weight should be.

I previously discussed the new study which shows that people classified as “overweight” actually have lower risk of death. The chart below shows the risk of death for the various categories:

Category	Deaths
Underweight (BMI < 18.5)	33,746
“Normal” (BMI 18.5 to < 25)	0
“Overweight” (BMI 25 to <30)	-86,094
Obese (BMI 30 to < 35)	29,843
Extremely Obese (BMI 35+)	82,066

Note the following amazing conclusions: (1) More deaths are caused by people being “underweight” than by people being “obese.” (2) More lives are saved by people being “overweight” than deaths caused by people being “extremely obese.”

If the number of people in the “normal” category is approximately 67% (a very rough approximation) of the number of people in the “overweight” category, and if all those people moved from the “normal” category to the “overweight category,” then 57,683 deaths would be prevented each year!

Of course, that’s not going to happen. But let’s suppose that, because of the government telling us that we need to lose weight in order to be healthy, one third of the people in the “normal” category would have otherwise been in the “overweight” category. Under this supposition, government lies have caused 19,228 deaths per year.

Let’s put this number in perspective. People are outraged over the 2,792 deaths caused by 9/11. Every single year, government lies about weight have caused the equivalent of nearly seven 9/11s!

People are outraged that 1,563 U.S. military deaths occurred because of our conquest of Iraq. More than twelve times that number of deaths have occurred every year because of government lies about weight.

Where’s the outrage? Why isn’t the whole blogosphere up in arms? Why isn’t Congress calling for hearings? Why aren’t people being punished for all of these preventable deaths?

Comments

[Scot B.]

But let’s suppose that, because of the government telling us that we need to lose weight in order to be healthy, one third of the people in the “normal” category would have otherwise been in the “overweight” category.

That would be a massive assumption to get outraged over, considering there's no evidence whatsoever that hardly anybody is at or near their given weight due to government recommendations. Much less 1/3. You could probably dig up bigger solid numbers related to unsafe highways and dirty air.

I lost a lot of weight, and it wasn't because of the gummint's nagging. It was to get the approval of my peers, and avoid diabetes.

[Michael A. Clem]

The others implied it, but the simple reason that people aren't more upset about this is that most of us simply ignore what the government thinks our weight ought to be, if they're even aware of the government recommendations in the first place.

[Felix Kasza]

Half Sigma,

your posting is disingenuous. You neglect to mention the elephant in the living room: BMI is not a measure of obesity (or underweight conditions, etc). Personal example: 5'11", 220 lbs; of those, about 40 lbs are fat (hydrostatic weighing). 12% body fat seems to be high enough to not be unhealthy, making me about 15 lbs overweight.

And yet my BMI is over 30.

So, I call BS on the study itself, and your interpretation is of necessity flawed by the study's defects.

Cheers,
Felix.