Weight Loss May Up Death Risk

[Celebration]

http://www.foodconsumer.org/777/8/Weight_loss_may_up_death_risk.shtml

Individuals who intended to lose weight and were successful had a higher mortality rate than those who planned to shed pounds but whose weight remained stable or went up. People who intended to lose weight and did so also had a higher mortality rate than those who did not aim to lose weight and kept their weight constant.

The authors suggested one possible explanation may be the unavoidable loss of lean body mass – which may outweigh the benefits of losing fat mass in healthy people.

The surprising results indicate a need for further study before the findings can “be used as basis for advice about intentional weight loss in the large population of otherwise healthy overweight and obese individuals.” The study also indicates the need to prevent the development of obesity altogether.

The study appeared in the June, 2005 issue of PLoS Medicine

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. This is very counter-intuitive.

Perhaps the key part is this:

"The authors suggested one possible explanation may be the unavoidable loss of lean body mass – which may outweigh the benefits of losing fat mass in healthy people."

If the weight loss was from dieting, restricting the intake of calories, that would result in loss of lean body mass. If, OTOH, the person's weight loss was from increasing activity and excercise, I shouldn't think there would be any loss of lean body mass, just of fat.

The article doesn't say what the weight loss parameters were, or how the weight was lost. I'd be curious to find out.

[HuckleB]

2. Free to Choose Obesity?

Free to Choose Obesity?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/08/opinion/08krugman.html?hp

"...

In public, the industry's companies proclaim themselves good guys, committed to healthier eating. Meanwhile, they outsource the campaigns against medical researchers and the dissemination of crude anti-anti-obesity propaganda to industry-financed advocacy groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom.

More broadly, the ideological landscape has changed drastically since the 1960's. (That change in the landscape also has a lot to do with corporate financing of advocacy groups, but that's a tale for another article.) In today's America, proposals to do something about rising obesity rates must contend with a public predisposed to believe that the market is always right and that the government always screws things up.

You can see these predispositions at work in an article printed last month in Amber Waves, a magazine published by the Department of Agriculture. The article is titled "Obesity Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences," suggesting that government efforts to combat obesity are likely to be counterproductive. But the authors don't actually provide any examples of how that might happen.

And the authors suggest, without quite asserting it, that because people freely choose obesity in a free market, it must be a good thing.

..."