Did anyone read the following article (it's long)?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1200549,00.html
It's entitled "The big fat con story" and is actually an excerpt from
The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession With Weight Is Hazardous To
Your Health by Paul Cosmos.

Some of it made sense and surprised me (the oft-quoted statistic that
300,000 US deaths per year are attributable to obesity did *not* take
into account smoking!); other parts seemed a little far-fetched (the
author argues perhaps Monicagate could have been avoided if Clinton
and Lewinsky weren't ridiculed for their weight).

I'd like to hear any opinions from asders who have read it. I found it
fascinating, even though it's making me question my weight loss goals.

Some of the more interesting parts:

--"The doctors and public health officials prosecuting the war on fat
would have us believe that who is or isn't fat is a scientific
question that can be answered by consulting something as crude as a
body mass index chart (the BMI is a simple mathematical formula that
puts people of different heights and weights on a single integrated
scale). This, like so many other claims at the heart of the case
against fat, is false. 'Fat' is a cultural construct. According to the
public health establishment's current BMI definitions, Brad Pitt,
Michael Jordan and Mel Gibson are all 'overweight', while Russell
Crowe, George Clooney and baseball star Sammy Sosa are all 'obese'.
According to America's fat police, if your BMI is over 25, then you
are 'overweight', full stop. Note also the radical difference between
how our culture defines 'fashionable' thinness for men and women. If
Jennifer Aniston had the same BMI as her husband Brad Pitt, she would
weigh approximately 55lb (nearly four stone) more than she does."

--"A 1996 project undertaken by scientists at the National Centre for
Health Statistics and Cornell University analysed the data from dozens
of previous studies, involving a total of more than 600,000 subjects
with up to a 30-year follow-up. Among non-smoking white men, the
lowest mortality rate was found among those with a BMI between 23 and
29, which means that a large majority of the men who lived longest
were 'overweight' according to government guidelines. The mortality
rate for white men in the supposedly ideal range of 19 to 21 was the
same as that for those in the 29 to 31 range (most of whom would be
defined now as 'obese'). In regard to non-smoking white women, the
study's conclusions were even more striking: the BMI range correlating
with the lowest mortality rate was extremely broad, from around 18 to
32, meaning a woman of average height could weigh anywhere within an
80-pound range without seeing any statistically significant change in
her risk of premature death."

--"Annual Deaths Attributable To Obesity In The United States, which
appeared in the Journal Of The American Medical Association (Jama) in
1999, is the source for the endlessly repeated statistic that
overweight causes around 300,000 extra deaths in the US every year.
(This 'fact' has been cited in the major media more than 1,700 times
in the past two years alone.) Look at these figures more closely. As
Glenn Gaesser, a professor at the University of Virginia points out,
studies have consistently failed to find any correlation between
increasing BMI and higher mortality in people 65 and over, and 78% of
the approximately 2.3 million annual deaths in the US occur among
people who are at least 65. Thus, 78% of all deaths lack even the
beginning of a statistical link with BMI. 'That leaves 500,000 annual
deaths in persons under 65 that might be related to BMI,' Gaesser told
me. 'These include deaths from every possible cause: motor vehicle and
other accidents, homicides, suicides, cigarettes, alcohol, microbial
agents, toxic agents, drug abuse, etc, etc. To think that 60% [ie,
300,000] of these deaths are due to body fat is absolutely
preposterous'"

--"Among supposedly 'ideal weight' individuals (BMI 18.5 to 24.9), the
study observed a mortality rate from cancer of 4.5 deaths for every
1,000 subjects. Among 'overweight' individuals (BMI 25 to 29.9 - a
category that currently includes about twice as many adult Americans
as the 'ideal weight' cohort), the cancer mortality rate was 4.4
deaths for every 1,000 subjects. In other words, 'overweight' people
actually had a lower overall cancer mortality rate than 'ideal weight'
individuals."

--"It is true that increasing weight is associated with high blood
pressure and certain types of heart disease. But even here there is
considerable evidence that this correlation is not necessarily a
product of being fat, but rather of losing and then regaining weight.
Obese patients who have been put on very low-calorie diets
subsequently display much higher rates of congestive heart failure
than equally fat people who did not attempt to lose weight in the
first place. The biggest evidentiary problem for those who insist
there is a strong causal link between increasing weight and heart
disease is that deaths from heart disease have been plunging at
precisely the same time that obesity rates have been skyrocketing."

Rogue