I don’t know if you saw the story last week out of Tokyo but it seems a study has shown fat people live longer than thin and healthy people.
To be honest I’ve not got much time for research like this. It reminded me of the bloke who used to run the local off-licence (evocatively called Bottle Shops down-under...) where I used to live in England many moons ago. He was a ferrety looking person with the pallor of a funeral director, but he was married to a sultry Italian woman who looked like Gina Lollobrigida. Yes of course I used to go in there regularly (umm, I mean into the off-licence..).
One day I was chatting to him about drinking and how much you should or shouldn’t consume, and also at the time there was loads of news about the benefits of eating plenty of fruit and veggies.
“You don’t believe all that, do you?” he said.
Sometimes I wonder. I mean if anyone can show me any definitive research that shows eating fruit and veggies makes you live longer I’ll eat my hat, I mean I’ll eat an apple.
Of course, it could be the same with this ‘overweight people live longer’ mularky.
Apparently what the Japanese Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry found was that people who were overweight at the age of 40 lived longer on average than people with other physiques.
The study showed that thin people had the shortest life expectancy, on average dying six or seven years earlier than overweight people. Serves them right for being so bloody pious, if you ask me.
Researchers studied the health of about 50,000 people aged 40 or older over a 12-year period. They looked at the past physiques of the participants and how long they lived past the age of 40, and grouped them according to their body mass index (BMI), an indicator of how fat a person is.
Men of regular weight (with a BMI of between 18.5 and 25) at age 40 lived for an average of 39.94 more years, while those who were overweight (BMI of between 25 and 30) at age 40 lived a further 41.64 years.
Women of regular weight lived on average a further 47.97 years, compared with overweight women, who lived another 48.05 years.
Obese men and women (BMI of 30 or more) lived a further 39.41 and 46.02 years, respectively. But thin men (BMI of less than 18.5) were on average expected to live 34.54 more years, and thin women another 41.79 years.
Possible explanations as to why thin people could die earlier included a theory that thin people are more susceptible to contagious diseases.