Some have taken the researchers to task regarding this study. For people with all levels of obesity, investigators found an 18% higher risk of death.įor their systematic review and meta-analysis, Katherine Flegal and colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined nearly 100 studies with close to three million people from the US, Canada, China, Japan, Israel, Brazil, Australia, and other countries. The publication in JAMA found that people with a body mass index (BMI) categorized as overweight had 6% less risk of death than people of lower weight. In fact, he’s offering up another rationalization for avoiding medical care. And it leads people to avoid necessary medical care.Ĭampos is doing nothing to solve this problem. Stigma and shame lead to social isolation and unhealthy eating behaviors that make the problem worse. People with obesity encounter discrimination and hateful treatment from an early age at school, at work, in healthcare, in social situations, and even in their own families. Research also shows that increasing bias and discrimination against people with obesity comes, at least in part, from a mistaken assumption that stigma and shame will motivate people to lose weight and improve their health. His argument is an unfortunate reaction to the very real, pervasive, and malignant weight bias that causes profound harm to millions of people. The second was a dogmatic editorial in the New York Times by Paul Campos using this study to advance the cause he’s been selling for some time in his book, The Obesity Myth.Ĭampos uses a classic rhetorical approach, reductio ad absurdum, to make the case that the health risk of obesity is a myth by claiming that the only alternative is a one size-fits-all standard for healthy weight. The first was an excellent study published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, documenting a survival benefit for overweight people. Obesity arguments over the health risks of excess weight were taken to a new level of absurdity with two publications in the last 24 hours.

Paul campos the obesity myth