A major new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association confirms the contrarian thesis of a book by University of Colorado School of Law Professor Paul Campos titled "The Diet Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health."
"The Diet Myth," the 2005 edition of "The Obesity Myth" which was published in 2004, analyzes hundreds of medical studies and concludes that being what the government defines as "overweight" is not a medical risk and is in fact optimal for a large percentage of the population. The book, published by Gotham/Penguin USA, also argues that the risks associated with higher-than-average weight have been systematically exaggerated by a public health establishment that has been captured by the nation's $50 billion per year weight-loss industry. Campos contends that dieting and weight obsession have made Americans both fatter and less healthy than they would otherwise be.
The new JAMA study finds that in the year 2000, so-called "overweight" people had the lowest risk for premature death, and that the risk of premature death among Americans labeled "overweight" and "obese" by the government was lower than among Americans who were not "overweight" and "obese."
The study reduces the number of premature deaths associated with being overweight and obese from an earlier figure of 400,000 -- a figure that "The Diet Myth" argued was deeply flawed and inaccurate -- to 25,000.
The data from the new study underlines the central contention of Professor Campos' book: that the so-called "overweight" category, which contains most Americans who the government claims weigh "too much," is scientifically baseless and socially destructive, and should be abandoned immediately. "Given that Americans are enjoying longer lives and better health than ever before, the claim that four out of five of us are running serious health risks because of our weight sounds exactly like the sort of exaggeration that can produce a cultural epidemic of fear," Campos argues.
"The data from the new JAMA study doesn't really tell us anything we didn't already know," Campos said. "It merely confirms what the medical literature suggests, when viewed in an objective way by researchers who aren't funded by the weight-loss industry."
Campos criticizes Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control, in the wake of this new study. "Dr. Gerberding has spent much of the last year arguing that weight loss should be America's No. 1 health-care priority, and that federal funding for health care should reflect this supposed reality," Campos said.
"She made these arguments on the basis of a paper she co-authored, which overestimated the actual number of deaths associated with overweight and obesity by a factor of 14," he said. "This represents an egregious failure of public health policy, for which she should take responsibility."