{"id":63043,"date":"2014-07-16T09:00:36","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T14:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=63043"},"modified":"2014-08-11T14:42:30","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T19:42:30","slug":"overweight-americans-have-the-lowest-risk-of-premature-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/07\/16\/overweight-americans-have-the-lowest-risk-of-premature-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Overweight Americans Have the Lowest Risk of Premature Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year the Journal of the American Medical Association<\/em>\u00a0released a\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0aiming to determine the relationship between body mass index\u00a0and the risk of premature death. Body mass index, or BMI, is the ratio between your height and weight. According to\u00a0the National Institutes of Health<\/a>, you are “normal weight”\u00a0if your ratio is between\u00a018.5-24.9. \u00a0Everything over that is “overweight” or “obese” and everything under is “underweight.”<\/p>\n

This study was a meta-analysis, which is an analysis of a collection of existing studies\u00a0that systematically\u00a0measures\u00a0the sum of our knowledge. \u00a0In this case, the authors analyzed\u00a097 studies that included a combined 2.88 million individuals and over\u00a0270,000 deaths. \u00a0They found that overweight individuals had a lower<\/em> risk of premature death than so-called normal weight individuals and there was no relationship between being somewhat obese and the rate of early\u00a0death. Only\u00a0among\u00a0people in the high range of obesity\u00a0was there a correlation between their weight and a higher risk of premature death.<\/p>\n

Here’s what it looked like.<\/p>\n

This is two columns of studies plotted according to the hazard ratio they reported for people. \u00a0This comparison is between people who are “overweight” (BMI = 25-29.9) and\u00a0people who are “normal weight” (BMI =\u00a018.5-24.9). \u00a0Studies that\u00a0fall below the line marked 1.0 found a lower rate of premature death and\u00a0studies above the line found a higher rate.<\/p>\n

\"25-29\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Just by eyeballing it, you can confirm that there is not a strong correlation between weight and premature death, at least in this population. When the scientists ran statistical analyses, the math showed that there is a statistically significant relationship between being “overweight” and a lower risk of death.<\/p>\n

Here’s\u00a0the same data, but\u00a0comparing the risk of premature death among\u00a0people who are “normal weight” (BMI\u00a0=\u00a018.5-24.9) and people who are somewhat “obese” (BMI\u00a0= 30-34.9). \u00a0Again, eyeballing the results suggest that there’s not much correlation and, in fact, statistical analysis found none.<\/p>\n

\"30-34.9\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, here are the results comparing\u00a0“normal weight” (BMI\u00a0=\u00a018.5-24.9) and people who are quite\u00a0“obese” (BMI\u00a0= 35 or higher). In this case, we do see a relationship between risk of premature death in body weight.<\/p>\n

\"35\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s almost funny that\u00a0the National\u00a0Institutes of Health use the word normal<\/em> when talking about BMI. It’s certainly not the norm\u00a0—<\/em> the average BMI<\/a> in the U.S. falls slightly into the “overweight” category\u00a0(26.6 for adult men and 25.5 for adult women) — and it’s not related to health. It’s clearly simply normative. <\/em>It’s related to a socially constructed physical ideal that has little relationship to what physicians and public health advocates are supposed to be concerned with. \u00a0Normal is judgmental, but if they changed the word to healthy<\/em>, they have to entirely rejigger their prescriptions.<\/p>\n

So, do we even have<\/em> an obesity epidemic? Perhaps not if we use health as a marker instead of some arbitrary decision to hate fat. \u00a0Paul Campos, covering this story for\u00a0the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, points out:<\/p>\n

If the government were to redefine normal weight as one that does not increase the risk of death, then about 130 million of the 165 million American adults currently categorized as overweight and obese would be re-categorized as normal weight instead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s 79%.<\/p>\n

It’s worth saying again: if we are\u00a0measuring by the risk of premature death, then 79% of the people we currently shame for being overweight or obese would be recategorized as perfectly fine. Ideal, even. Pleased to be plump, let’s say, knowing that a body that\u00a0is a happy balance of\u00a0soft and strong is the kind of body that will carry them\u00a0through a lifetime.<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Adios Barbie<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year the Journal of the American Medical Association\u00a0released a\u00a0study\u00a0aiming to determine the relationship between body mass index\u00a0and the risk of premature death. Body mass index, or BMI, is the ratio between your height and weight. According to\u00a0the National Institutes of Health, you are “normal weight”\u00a0if your ratio is between\u00a018.5-24.9. \u00a0Everything over that is “overweight” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":63045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,235,244,23645,23384,252,274,283,293,23647],"class_list":["post-63043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-dietexercise-industry","tag-fat","tag-bodies-prejudicediscrimination","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-healthmedicine","tag-methodsuse-of-data","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-social-construction","tag-social-construction-social-problems"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/30-34.9.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63043"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63710,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63043\/revisions\/63710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}