On Second Thought, Make that a Cheeseburger!

Huh? Government wrong? Maybe they didn't kill as many of us as previously thought with their ridiculous "Four Food Groups," and its moronic successor, "The Food Pyramid."

The AP reports Yahoo! News - Obesity Danger May Have Been Overstated

CHICAGO - Being overweight is nowhere near as big a killer as the government thought, ranking No. 7 instead of No. 2 among the nation's leading preventable causes of death, according to a startling new calculation from the CDC.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated Tuesday that packing on too many pounds accounts for 25,814 deaths a year in the United States. As recently as January, the CDC came up with an estimate 14 times higher: 365,000 deaths.

The new analysis found that obesity — being extremely overweight — is indisputably lethal. But like several recent smaller studies, it found that people who are modestly overweight actually have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight.

Biostatistician Mary Grace Kovar, a consultant for the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center in Washington, said "normal" may be set too low for today's population. Also, Americans classified as overweight are eating better, exercising more and managing their blood pressure better than they used to, she said.

Anybody can miss a prediction, but it takes a government agency to miss by a factor of 14. Whadaya say we let the private sector handle diet concerns, and have the government stick to important things like the mohair subsidy.

UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru links to the mypyramid.gov site and asks "WHAT WOULD WE DO without the federal government telling us what we should eat?"

We're from the government, and here to help. Posted by jk at April 19, 2005 5:57 PM