Evidence suggests that up to 30% of people who are obese are perfectly healthy. Rudd Centre for Food Policy

“No one can claim to be unaware of the risks of obesity in this day and age. Almost every day there are discussions in the media about the risks of carrying excess fat. But research shows the link between obesity and ill-health is not as simple as it’s often made out to be.

“Obesity is all over the media – newspaper and magazine articles talk about high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and more unusual illnesses linked to obesity, such as sleep apnoea; there are suggested diets and exercise plans to help reduce fat at every turn and; popular, humiliating television shows enforce strict weight-loss regimens on the morbidly obese while providing entertainment.

“But while research shows obese people often have metabolic conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, this is not the whole picture. What’s rarely, if ever, mentioned in the popular press (although it’s receiving growing interest in scientific circles) is the phenomenon of the metabolically healthy obese.

“In most obese people, we can find evidence of metabolic abnormalities that result from the excess fat they carry. We can measure that these people need more of a hormone called insulin from their pancreas when they eat, to help burn up glucose in their cells. We call this phenomenon “insulin resistance”. It’s insulin resistance that eventually causes obesity-related complications such as high blood pressure, high blood fat levels, diabetes and heart disease.

“There has, of course, always been something of a paradox around fatness and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tables survival curves, which show how long people live at different body weights. In the Life Insurance Tables, being overweight in itself is not actually a risk for early death – certainly not when compared with being underweight. This may, in part, relate to the fact that serious illnesses are often heralded by long-term insidious weight loss, particularly as we get older. It’s only at obese levels of weight that mortality is clearly higher.

“Up to ⅔ of adults are now overweight or obese – why is obesity so common?” Read the entire article from The Conversation here.