'Overweight Is OK' Study Shows You Can Trust CDC

Yesterday, the CDC released a study that flies in the face of the public health orthodoxy: Apparently, you can actually be too thin. That's staggering, given that for about a century now, fashion, cinema, and, yes, public health organs like the CDC have "made thin synonymous with beauty and health," writes Dr. Kent Sepkowitz in the Daily Beast. "The rout of the public by the thin-ocracy has been so complete that a goal other than blind pursuit of the flat stomach and the sharp jaw seems sacrilegious."

But the heartening thing isn't that you can have a little cake. It's that the CDC was willing "to be guided by data, and not by a preconceived notion of the 'message,'" Sepkowitz writes. Unlike politics, where facts, to quote Ronald Reagan, are stupid things, in science "facts are facts and always worth pursuing." Which is why "the same group of public health experts who have fought to keep America thinner was willing to stand behind the current study." Read the full post here. (More public health stories.)