Fatted

A series of studies have shown that being "overweight" makes you live longer. Slate has a good wrap up. This is the sort of thing that makes me want to abandon modern medicine and run off to the Alps with Heidi. We adopt this overly simplistic flawed measurement (the body mass index) and build all of this architecture on that foundation (from giving dieting advice to giving pills). And eventually that becomes the only thing visible to us - instead of thinking "hmm, I feel healthy, strong, I still can get to the top of the hill without breathing hard, I'm happy so I must be doing something right" the tendency is to think "the number says I'm fat! the number says I'm fat!"