Is Being Fat Bad For You?

Maintenance Phase

For nearly four decades, Americans have heard a simple story about health, longevity and obesity. This week, we learn it's a little more complicated. 

Thanks to Katherine Flegal, Paul Campos, Jeff Hunger and Jason Salemi for helping us research and fact-check this episode! 

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Links!

  • Katherine Flegal’s “The obesity wars and the education of a researcher”
  • Walter Willett's " Evidence does not support benefit of being overweight on mortality"
  • Flegal’s 2005 paper
  • Flegal’s 2013 article
  • Willett’s 2016 meta-analysis
  • The infamous 2004 CDC paper
  • Fat: A Cultural History of Obesity
  • Paul Campos's "The Obesity Myth"
  • Walter Willett’s Food Fight           
  • The obesity research that blew up
  • Flawed methods and inappropriate conclusions for health policy on overweight and obesity: The Global BMI Mortality Collaboration meta-analysis
  • Does Body Mass Index Adequately Convey a Patient’s Mortality Risk?
  • The Weight of Medical Authority: The Making and Unmaking of Knowledge in the Obesity Epidemic
  • Obesity: An Overblown Epidemic? 
  • Commentary: On ‘public health aspects of weight control’
  • Obesity And Its Relation To Health And Disease
  • Does Being Overweight Really Reduce Mortality?
  • Individual and Aggregate Years-of-life-lost Associated With Overweight and Obesity

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