Not a Crisis After All

The “obesity crisis” became a hot topic just over a decade ago when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published data showing that American weights were increasing. All sort of interest groups jumped on this crisis, including urban planners who blamed obesity on urban sprawl and driving.

If obesity has a cause, it is more likely due to the increased availability of low-cost sweeteners such as high-fructose corn syrup than to sprawl. For one thing, obesity appears to be increasing throughout the developed world, including in European nations that supposedly have controlled sprawl.

In commenting on this supposed problem more than a decade ago, the Antiplanner was skeptical that obesity was even a crisis. “More than one recent study has found that weight is less important to health as you get older,” I noted. “People over 50 can have BMIs [body mass indices] as high as 32 and not suffer any greater mortality than people with BMIs under 25. Researchers add that, unless such people have heart disease, diabetes, or some other obesity-related disease, asking them to diet “might unjustifiably decrease their perceived quality of life.”

It turns out this isn’t just true for people over 50. As yesterday’s Wall Street Journal noted (see also an article in the Independent), a new CDC study indicates that people who are somewhat overweight (BMIs of 25 to 30) can actually expect to live longer than people of “normal” weight (BMIs of 18 to 25).

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This doesn’t necessarily mean that health care costs of overweight people are lower than for people of normal weight. Being overweight tends to be associated with diabetes, heart disease, and other problems that may reduce quality of life without necessarily reducing life spans. Yet it seems likely that the social costs of being overweight or even mildly obese have been exaggerated.

If 97 different studies found this to be true, then why is it only coming out now (not counting the Antiplanner’s 2002 article)? One answer is that health care officials obsessively believe that obesity is bad and don’t want a contrary opinion to get out. “You’d hate to have the message get out there that it’s good to be overweight,” one researcher told the Wall Street Journal.

“I am flabbergasted,” a spokesman for the UK National Obesity Forum told the Independent. Even though he expressed admiration for the CDC researcher who compiled this study, he still insisted that “The sum total of medical expert opinion cannot have got it so wrong.” After all, if they are wrong, then he is out of a job.

The Antiplanner isn’t going to go out and gain weight just to slightly increase my statistical lifespan. But all those urban planners and other people who jumped on the obesity bandwagon to push their own agendas need to know that the obesity epidemic they are relying on isn’t as big of a problem as they would like to believe.