Study Claims Obesity Risks Similar to Those of Smoking
A recent study has reportedly compared long-term teen obesity risks to those incurred by smokers. Martin Neovius, et al., “Combined effects of overweight and smoking in late adolescence on subsequent mortality: nationwide cohort study,” British Medical Journal, February 24, 2009. After examining the death rates of 45,920 Swedish servicemen over 38 years, researchers found that recruits who were obese in 1969 and 1970 were twice as likely to die by age 60 than those who had a normal body mass index between 25 and 29.9. Obese men thus experienced an increase in risk the same as that of normal-weight men who smoked half a pack of cigarettes or more per day. The study results also suggested that overweight recruits were approximately one-third more likely to die prematurely, a risk profile similar to that of normal-weight men who smoked 10 cigarettes per day.
Although one expert from Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health cautioned that the data might overestimate the risk for overweight men, he nevertheless noted that smoking is “widely acknowledged” to be the single most important cause of preventable deaths and disease. “It’s fairly dramatic when you say something is as lethal as smoking,” he was quoted as saying. “We know of very few things from a health perspective that are as lethal as smoking.” See The New York Times, March 4, 2009.
