‘Weight is healthy’ study criticised

One labelled the findings a "pile of rubbish" while another said it was a "horrific message" to put out.
 
The research, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggested the overweight were less likely to die prematurely than people with a "healthy" weight.
 
Being underweight or severely obese did cut life expectancy. The researchers at the US National Centre for Health Statistics looked at 97 studies involving nearly 2.9 million people to compare death rates with Body Mass Index (BMI) – a way of measuring obesity using a person’s weight and height.
 
A healthy BMI is considered to be above 18.5 and below 25. However, overweight people (with a BMI between 25 and 30) were 6% less likely to die early than those considered to have a healthy weight, the study reports.
 
Mildly obese people (BMI between 30 and 35) were no more likely to die prematurely than people with a healthy BMI.
 
The study said being "overweight was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality".
 
Possible explanations included overweight people getting medical treatment, such as to control blood pressure, more quickly or the extra weight helping people survive being severely ill in hospital.