HEALTH

Patients wonder: Is it OK to enjoy food again?

Some physicians worry that recent findings confuse anti-obesity messages and say excess weight remains a health risk.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. May 16, 2005.

Washington -- Extra pounds are not necessarily associated with excess mortality -- at least that's one of the findings in a new study published in the April 20 Journal of the American Medical Association.

It's a conclusion that some physicians say could disrupt efforts to curb the nation's obesity epidemic. Already, the study has had the unintended consequence of spawning full-page ads in a national news magazine and in newspapers across the country, mocking the idea that obesity is a major health threat.

"Americans have been force-fed a steady diet of obesity myths by the 'food police,' trial lawyers, and even our own government," said the ad, paid for by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit group funded by restaurants and the food industry.

The study also fueled CCF criticism of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 2004 estimate that 400,000 deaths annually are related to obesity, which the agency later determined was incorrect. The new findings peg the figure at 112,000 deaths per year related to obesity and none associated with overweight, defined as a body mass index of 25 to less than 30.

"Following the CDC's declaration that our love handles cause 400,000 deaths a year, everyone from the governor of Arkansas to top USDA officials began saying Americans are eating themselves to death. They are now eating their own words," according to the CCF.

The resulting concern is that patients will see such messages not as spin but as permission to indulge.

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