The Fat of the land: The Obesity Epidemic and How Overweight Americans Can help Themselves.

• Author: Fumento, Michael

A few years ago the National Center for Health Statistics reported that one-third of Americans were obese in 1991, compared to one-fourth in 1980. You might have seen the front-page article in The New York Times. Perhaps you shook your head and thought, "Those poor fat bastards."

Not so fast. Michael Fumento wants you to know that obesity, "defined as being at least 20 percent fatter than [you] should be," is only part of the story. "According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences," he writes on the first page of The Fat of the Land, "about two thirds of us are too heavy for optimum health." Two-thirds.

I hope I have your attention now. Do you remember the last time you looked at that weight table in your doctor's office? You probably thought, "Come on. Nobody stays in that range once they get out of college." In fact, according to survey data from 1996, 74 percent of Americans exceed their maximum recommended weight. "So instead of talking about a third of Americans being at risk because of being overweight," Fumento writes, "we really should be talking about somewhere around three fourths."

Worse, it turns out that the current weight table, based on 1983 figures from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, is relatively lenient. The 1959 table allowed even fewer pounds. The targets were changed as Americans got fatter - for no good reason that Fumento can see. Like the Center for Science in the Public Interest, he seems to prefer the older, stricter table, which better reflects the weight ranges associated with the lowest mortality rates. So we really should be talking about...nearly everyone, I guess.

Fumento, a medical journalist, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and former REASON science correspondent, has tackled many overhyped or imaginary hazards in his books and articles, including heterosexual AIDS, radon, electromagnetic fields, pesticide residues, and secondhand smoke. He has argued tenaciously and persuasively that highly publicized "illnesses" - Gulf War Syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity - do not exist. Now, having lost 25 pounds of extra weight after years of trying, he turns to obesity, and his message is: It's worse than you think.

This might seem like a bold thesis, given our national obsession with thinness. To most Americans, though, weight is primarily a matter of physical attractiveness, and Fumento emphasizes its impact on health, including an increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and certain cancers. Furthermore, he argues convincingly that false beliefs about the causes and consequences of obesity help explain why Americans keep getting fatter despite their preoccupation with weight. Having digested a mountain of research, he takes on the cranks, hucksters, activists, and government officials who help perpetuate these misconceptions. Unfortunately, in his single-minded pursuit of the facts, he neglects the role that values, tastes, and preferences play in decisions about diet and exercise.

Maybe you've put on a few pounds - moved up a pants size, started to round down when asked your weight - but you figured it was purely an aesthetic issue. Wrong. The latest research shows that being even just a little overweight can shorten your life. "Unless you are affecting your immediate health (such as some anorexics do) one cannot be too thin," Fumento writes. "Making yourself little but skin and bones is not healthy; being below average weight in a country where most people are overweight is healthy." Judging from the results of one study, "the average woman weighs 30 pounds too many to have a full life expectancy."

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