Myth number 1: "Obesity kills 300,000 people a year"

This figure was based on a 1993 study by Michael McGinnis and William Foege which appeared in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. What McGinnis and Foege actually calculated was that "dietary factors and activity patterns that are too sedentary" contributed to 300,000 deaths a year. (JAMA 270 - Nov 10, 1993 pp 2207-2212)

The New England Journal of medicine misrepresented the findings of this study as to state that 300,000 deaths were caused by obesity as did other media sources and in 1998, McGinnis and Foege published a letter of concern in the NEJM stating that the results of their study had misrepresented by the NEJM and other media sources. (NEJM 338 (16), 1998 p. 1157.) The scientists named obesity, hypertension, heart disease and cancer as some of the side effects of our 'dietary and activity' patterns but could not discern how many deaths were attributable to each single factor.

The McGinnis-Foege study may have actually built upon the results of the 20 year long Cooper Institute Studies of 20,000 men which showed that fitness level and amount of exercise determined the morbidity risk rate regardless of what people weighed i.e. fat couch potatos and THIN couch potatoes seemed at equal risk whereas fat exercisers seemed at no more risk than thin exercisers and at MUCH LESS RISK than thin couch potatoes.

Stephen Blair, the lead scientist on this study who himself, has a BMI of 40 and runs 30 miles a week at the age of 65, was on the expert committee who helped formulate the Surgeon General's paper on exercise 1996. This paper stated among other things that NOT EXERCISING was as risky as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and suggested that to remain healthy (regardless of weight), people needed to include 30 minutes moderate to intense aerobic activity on most days. (REF: Surgeon General's paper on Obesity, 1996. Also see Frazer, Laura: LOSING IT, NY 1997, or Colles, Lisa: FAT - EXPLODING THE MYTHS, London, 1998)

In 1999, another study by Allison, Fontaine, Manson and VanItallie appeared in JAMA and reported, more dramatically that "obesity caused 300,000 deaths" each year. What the paper ACTUALLY said is that 300,000 obese Americans were dying prematurely each year "from something". (i.e. did not specify WHAT the people were dying from) (JAMA 282, Oct 27, 1999, pp 1530-1538) (REF: Pool, Robert: FAT - FIGHTING THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC, NY - 2001)

In 1996, Glenn Gaesser, PhD, reported on his five year metastudy which reviewed twenty years of obesity research. He, himself a slim man, was surprised to find that despite the current train of thought on obesity, there were NO STUDIES in the last 20 years, which found morbidity DIRECTLY linked to obesity although some of the factors which did cause morbidity like consuming too much trans-fat in the diet or not exercising, were at times, CAUSING obesity. In other words, obesity was, sometimes, a symptom, but NOT a CAUSE.

Gaesser further noted that the MetLife studies upon which the famous weight charts were based, did not find that people who weigh more, are at higher risk. The research which studied thousands of people who collected on their term life (at 65 or before) and assumed these policies were cashed in because the person had died - an assumption which cannot always be made, found confusing results. At younger ages, the slimmer people seemed less prone to die however this was not always true in all ages. For example, the woman, 5'5" inches tall at 55 years, least likely to die, weighed 194 lbs!

Gaesser discovered that the MetLife company, expected to provide the weight charts to help us to see "how healthy we are by what we weigh" could NOT base the charts on their own studies which did NOT show that heavier people were necessarily at more risk, so they took the healthiest weight at age 21 and created a mathematical formula to derive the charts from that. (REF: Gaesser, Glenn: BIG FAT LIES - NY, 1996 - see also: Frazer, Laura: LOSING IT - NY, 1998) There are many examples of Hollywood thin stars who have severe problems of hypertension, coronary artery disease and more which should give us a clue that obesity alone does NOT cause these problems!

Myth number 2: Morbidity risk factor can be discerned by calculating BMI

When BMI measuring became popular, it was hailed by the diet industry which immediately saw their potential customer base increase dramatically. However it was soon criticized by most fitness experts who found that at low body fat levels, they had been included in the "new obesity" definitions.

Today, outside the diet industry, medical providers use BMI because it's more convenient to work with than other (more accurate) measurements like body fat percentage, but those I have asked about this (and pointed out the gross inaccuracy of a measurement which ignors bodytype, bone structure and musculature) tell me that they use BMI for a quick gauge in coordination with other factors like measuring blood pressure, examining blood work and more.

In other words, most who USE BMI are treating obesity like a symptom in conjunction with OTHER symptoms rather than as a disease. In contrast those who sell diets are using obesity as THE DISEASE and when they hawk their wares, they intimate that all a person has to do to "get healthy" to "lose weight". According to decades of scientific study, nothing could be further from the truth!

The ultimate sad outcome of this myth coming from the diet industry that obesity is THE DISEASE is when individuals have a surgeon disable parts of their digestive tract permanently (in Weight Loss Surgery or WLS), to force them to "lose weight". The results of the "life saving surgery" (as WLS is sometimes called) can not only be life shortening but immediately life threatening.

Although there is little to no evidence that obesity can kill, the last decade has seen many studies which show that dieting is extremely unhealthy to say the least. Since the body can only obtain simple carbohydrates from body fat, when the body is starved of nutrients, it cannibalizes its own muscle and organ tissue to obtain the hundreds of vitamins and nutrients it requires to function. This tissue, which is cannibalized, can include brain tissue (a rich source of protein) and heart tissue. For example, we have stored up in the liver, about 3 years worth of iron.

Most authorities agree that even in a sensible diet like Weight Watchers (which is called "semi starvation" by some scientists), in the body weight, which is lost, less than 1/3 is body fat and the other 2/3 is organ and muscle tissue. By cannibalizing itself, the body also manages to lower the metabolism, the daily caloric needs. Again this works well in times of real environmental starvation but not well at all for folks who wish to keep the body fat off. In Robert Pool's book (see cite above), he mentions that scientists studying obesity had noted that the metabolisms of obese people who were dieting can remain damaged for as long as ten years or more after the diet has ended.

The reason dieting works like this is because the body has a built-in 'famine relief system.' This system works well to keep us alive during short periods where food is not available but it is abusing the system to use it to maintain a fashionable skeletal appearance and there is quite a bit of evidence that this definitely takes its toll on the general health and longevity of the dieter.

This would suggest that dieting on a long term basis which society demands of us, in order to maintain unrealistic weight goals, might be far less healthy than remaining fat. In fact, some research has suggested that those who LOSE as little as 10 percent of their bodyweight might be in MORE danger of heart attack! And one only need to observe the stars who are experts at "keeping slim" to suspect that this is not a healthy lifestyle. For instance, models who have quit the business have revealed that it's not "good genes" which keep the models thin but systematic starvation. One who just quit modeling said that she not only ate an average of 500 calories a day (she would need at least 2000) to keep model thin but also, used cocaine to mask the fatigue of starvation.

Of course, the earliest starvation studies were in the 1940s when researchers found that participants became obsessed with food as well as depressed and non functional after a couple of months. But we have not learned since then and still advocate denying ourselves food in order to be thin which is equated with "healthy". This trend definitely feeds the ever-growing diet industry, which is happy to stand by and take our money to help us to become more fashionable and less healthy through starvation.