Eat more, eat less

A recent study showed that being "overweight" can be good for you (Study: Overweight People Live Longer):

There is more evidence that people who are overweight tend to live longer than people who are underweight, normal weight, or obese.  In a newly published study, people who were underweight and those who were extremely obese died the earliest.

People who were overweight, but not obese, actually lived longer than people whose weight was considered normal, based on body mass index (BMI).

This seems counter-intuitive because we are always told that we should be losing weight.  But wait - monkeys who are given 30% less food appear to stay healthier and live longer . 

Over 20 years, monkeys whose diets were not restricted were nearly three times more likely to have died than those whose calories were counted.

Writing in Science, the US researchers hailed the "major effect" of the diet.

It involved reducing calorie intake by 30% while maintaining nutrition and appeared to impact upon many forms of age-related disease seen in monkeys, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and brain atrophy.

It seems as if there is a study somewhere out there that will support almost any theory.

Comments

[Joyce Hor-Chung Lau]

We ran a photo of both the fat and thin monkey in this study. OK, maybe thin monkey will live a bit longer, but the poor thing looked miserable. The study said the thin monkey's diet -- he had been fed 30% fewer calories than a normal healthy diet, every day since practically birth -- would be unsustainable in humans. Nobody would be able to stick to it. Essentially, thin monkey was locked up and forced on a near-starvation diet.
Frankly, I'd rather die a bit sooner.
The article wasn't very well done because it -- like many science articles -- tries to draw too neat a link between us and animals. There have been no human tests done on this. God, 1/3 less food all through childhood? I wouldn't be surprised if it caused stunted mental or physical development.

[Cecilie]

How many obese 100 year-olds do you know? This article (perhaps written by a fatty?) just tried to say to fat-lovers everywhere: Eat more! to make them feel better. It's like in the States: instead of getting people to slim down, they just change the numbers on clothes, so that what was before a size 16 is now a size 12.
Sorry people: FAT people die earlier, not slim ones.

[Sword of Truth]

There are no old fat people or cocaine users. There's a reason for that.