Om överdrifterna i fetmaepidemin

Physorg skriver om att vissa experter anser att fetmaepidemin är överdriven - några stycken:

Blaming obesity for diabetes and heart attacks, Oliver says, is like blaming lung cancer on bad breath rather than on smoking. Excess weight may actually be a red herring, [professor Eric] Oliver says, since other factors like exercise, diet or genetic predispositions towards diseases are harder to measure than weight.

According to national health statistics released last month, from 1993 to 2006, "relatively little change" was noted in weight gain, with men and women gaining an average of about 4 kilograms (9 pounds). In children, no significant gains were recorded.

In 2005, Katherine Flegal of the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, finding that overweight people typically live longer than normal-weight people. More than a dozen other studies have come to the same conclusion.

"There's not a lot of money in trying to debunk obesity, but a huge amount in making sure it stays a big problem," said Patrick Basham, a professor of health care policy at Johns Hopkins University.