Let's eat!

This is an interesting article. (Which came by way of Marginal Revolution. The part that I find most interesting is this quote:

The latest study had another surprising finding: People who are modestly overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than people of normal weight. Indeed, the fewer deaths from being modestly overweight partially canceled out the deaths from obesity.

Whoa! Does that mean that the BMI scales are wrong? Does that mean that people who work are to get their BMI index down to w/in "normal" are actually lowering their overall health? For me to hit the upper limit of BMI requires that I lose approximately 20 lbs. I can't wait to tell my wife that it would be detrimental to my health if I did that!

Katherine Flegal, a CDC scientist who led work on the study while a visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley's Center for Weight and Health, said she hoped the findings don't take away from the importance of focusing on obesity as a public health problem.

"Our numbers suggest that weight-related mortality is not as great as previously thought," she said. "But our study just looks at part of the picture. We didn't look at issues such as quality of life. These results shouldn't be overinterpreted to mean that we can all rest easy."

Aw, crap!