Better off (low end) obese than underweight?

[biggestloser105]

It seems that it's better to be overweight or even slightly obese than underweight and for men at the low end of healthy BMI. That's pretty surprising to me. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity which references ^ Freedman DM, Ron E, Ballard-Barbash R, Doody MM, Linet MS (May 2006). "Body mass index and all-cause mortality in a nationwide US cohort". Int J Obes (Lond) 30 (5): 822–9. doi:10.1038/sj.ijo.0803193. PMID 16404410. for those charts)

 

[Harold14370]

I'd be careful interpreting those statistics. Correlation does not always equate to cause. The statistics would include anorexics and people who are underweight because they are already sick.

 

[summer123]

I have no prettied up way to say this: thos graphs are b*ll*ks. Unture. Not sure where you got them but how many 90yr olds who are a BMI of 35+ do you know? I know none.

 

[biggestloser105]

I have no prettied up way to say this: thos graphs are b*ll*ks. Unture. Not sure where you got them but how many 90yr olds who are a BMI of 35+ do you know? I know none.

I don't know any 90 year olds hehe. Though to clarify the >35 BMI is a very high risk, it's the 30-35 BMI that's lower risk than underweight according to that chart (and for men also lower risk than low end of healthy BMI).

I don't know, I'm about 30.5 BMI now at 5'5" 182 lbs, and I'd say a lot of elderly people I see look closer to my size than a skinnier size.

I haven't read the actual study, so I don't know how they sampled. Obviously if they didn't control for things like illness, as another poster earlier pointed out the underweight category could include anorexics, people who are underweight as a result of illness, and also malnourished people. I will look at the actual study a little bit later and post about it.