Being 25 pounds overweight doesn’t appear to raise your risk of dying from cancer or heart disease, says a new government study that seems to vindicate Grandma’s claim that a few extra pounds won’t kill you.
The news isn’t all good: Overweight people do have a higher chance of dying from diabetes and kidney disease.
However, having a little extra weight actually seemed to help people survive some illnesses — results that baffled several leading health researchers.
Obesity researcher Barry Popkin of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill notes that the study “is about death. This is not about health and sickness.”
It doesn’t address whether cancer and heart disease occur more often in overweight people — something that has been suggested by other research.