Being overweight can extend life rather than shorten it, according to a major new study that runs counter to widespread medical assumptions and years of warnings about the fatal implications of Britain’s expanding waistlines.
Dr Flegal herself stressed that findings are not a licence to eat cream cakes. “We were only looking at mortality – not health. We are absolutely not recommending people overeat. We intended our research to give a little perspective – to counter the view that if you weigh a bit less you will live forever or if you weigh more you are doomed. The relationship between fat and mortality is more complicated than we tend to think.”
Possible explanations for the findings are that fat – adipose tissue – may protect the heart, carrying a few extra pounds may help individuals withstand periods of illness or hospitalisation when they lose appetite, and the distribution of fat on the body is more important than the amount, with extra on the hips being good while extra on the stomach is thought bad.
It may also be that the health risks of being overweight are declining with advances in medicine. Drug treatments to lower blood pressure and cholesterol have contributed to a dramatic fall in heart disease deaths. Fitness, too, may be more important than fatness. People who are overweight, smoke, eat junk food and take no exercise are heading for an early grave.