{"id":6485,"date":"2009-02-21T02:58:09","date_gmt":"2009-02-21T07:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=6485"},"modified":"2010-12-23T03:33:57","modified_gmt":"2010-12-23T08:33:57","slug":"does-being-overweight-contribute-to-premature-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/02\/21\/does-being-overweight-contribute-to-premature-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Being “Overweight” Contribute to Premature Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Much of the discourse around the benefits of being thin revolves around the assumption that extra pounds are harmful to health.\u00a0 Ampersand at Alas A Blog posted<\/a> about a study in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/em> (citation below) that shows that\u00a0 those who are overweight (according\u00a0to the BMI scale) are not at a higher risk of premature death than those who are deemed of “normal” weight.\u00a0\u00a0 The boxes in red are categories in which the risk for premature death is equal to or less than the reference group (normal weight people).<\/p>\n

\"rr_by_bmi_large\"<\/p>\n

This is Ampersand’s conclusion (and his table, too).<\/p>\n

The authors of the study, as commenter A.C. pointed out,\u00a0 come to the opposite conclusion.\u00a0 They argue, after looking at the data in different ways, say that overweight persons are at a higher risk for death.<\/p>\n

Ampersand doesn’t buy it.\u00a0 He offers a critique here<\/a> where, among other things, he points out:<\/p>\n

In order to produce the finding that \u201coverweight\u201d is less healthy than \u201cnormal weight,\u201d Dr. Adams did a very dishonest statistical manipulation – he compared just one \u201cnormal\u201d BMI range, representing the heaviest <\/em>people in the \u201cnormal\u201d range, to the entire <\/em>\u201coverweight\u201d range. This is because the majority of people in the \u201cnormal weight\u201d categories had a greater <\/em>risk of death than the majority of people in the \u201coverweight\u201d category.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This might be a great way to discuss\u00a0how methods and statistics never speak for themselves.<\/p>\n

Relatedly, this post<\/a> offers a really great visual critique of the BMI scale.<\/p>\n

Citation:\u00a0 Adams, K., et al., \u201cOverweight, Obesity, and Mortality in a Large Prospective Cohort of Persons 50 to 71 Years Old.\u201d New England Journal of Medicine<\/em>, 2006. 355(8): p. 763-8.\u00a0 Here<\/a> if you have a subscription to ProQuest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much of the discourse around the benefits of being thin revolves around the assumption that extra pounds are harmful to health.\u00a0 Ampersand at Alas A Blog posted about a study in the New England Journal of Medicine (citation below) that shows that\u00a0 those who are overweight (according\u00a0to the BMI scale) are not at a higher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[244,233,135,252,274],"class_list":["post-6485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fat","tag-death","tag-demography","tag-healthmedicine","tag-methodsuse-of-data"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6485","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=6485"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6488,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6485\/revisions\/6488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}