The Fatter of Two Evils

Fat is correlated with ill health, of course, and the one-third of the U.S. population who qualify as obese may be subject to some very real and severe consequences. An obese person is up to twice as likely to die of any given cause than someone whose body mass index is in the normal range, controlling for other factors. In medical terms, we would say that his or her relative risk of all-cause mortality is between 1 and 2. What about smoking? The analogous number for those who consume at least one pack of cigarettes per day is 3.7, meaning that heavy smokers are almost four times more likely to perish than nonsmokers, about double the risk associated with obesity. Estimates of avoidable deaths reflect this difference in the odds: According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking accounts for an excess mortality of more than 400,000 Americans every year, compared to just 112,000 for obesity. That's despite the fact that there are many more fat Americans?obesity rates are now 50 percent higher than smoking rates.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=9eadc2f623562bfeb6fbf6fb3fbe2b04

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