The other cause [that the study found for obesity], the decrease in smoking, is also something to celebrate. My own family lost numerous members, otherwise physically fit, before their time to diseases associated with smoking. It is unlikely that obesity will have the same effect. A 1999 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that even clinically obese people who were otherwise fit were actually less likely to die early than those of normal body weight who were unfit.

Which all goes to show how big a mistake declaring obesity a disease was. All that does is allow people to claim back the costs of specialized weight-reduction programs (which rarely work in the long term) from government-funded insurance programs. The diet industry, which lobbied hard for the change, must have been delighted.