Harvard Wants You to be Unhealthily Thin

[CleverBomb]

NRO Online:

A big problem with elite institutions is that, for years on end, people in such places can abuse their positions by saying things that aren't true, before anyone whose opinion counts notices.

A particularly clear example of this is provided by the Harvard School of Public Health, which for many years has been pushing a phony claim with great success. The story is simple: That it's well-established scientific fact that being "overweight"--that is, having a body mass index figure of between 25 and 30--is, in the words of Harvard professors Walter Willett and Meir Stampfer, "a major contributor to morbidity and mortality." This claim has been put forward over and over again by various members of the School of Public Health's faculty, with little or no qualification.

It's difficult to exaggerate the extent to which the actual scientific evidence fails to support any of this. In fact, the current evidence suggests that what the Harvard crew is saying is not merely false, but closer to the precise opposite of the truth. For the most part, the so-called "overweight" BMI range doesn't even correlate with overall increased health risk. Indeed "overweight," so-called, often correlates with the lowest mortality rates. (This has led to much chin-scratching over the "paradox" of why "overweight" people often have better average life expectancy and overall health than "normal weight" people.

To clarify (go on, read the whole thing!) it does not say that obese people are also healthier. It's just pointing out that not only is the BMI-based definition of "healthy weight" is incorrectly skewed toward the skinny end of the spectrum, but also that being thinner than that is also likely to be bad for you.


-Rusty
Hat tip to Lawyers, Guns, and Money via the well-known and very non-serious blue blogger.