Just a Few Extra Pounds Could Mean Fewer Years, Study Finds

From an article of the same title by Rob Stein in the Washington Post:

Bad news for all those baby boomers starting to pile on the pounds as they go through middle age: You don't have to be obese -- just a little overweight -- to increase your risk of dying prematurely, according to a large government study. The 10-year study of more than 500,000 U.S. adults found that those who were just moderately overweight in their fifties were 20 percent to 40 percent more likely to die in the next decade. Another study involving more than 1 million Korean adults, also being published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, produced similar results... The number of Americans who are overweight has been increasing steadily in the United States. About two-thirds of Americans are now overweight, including about a third who are obese. Anyone with a body mass index (BMI) between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight, whereas a BMI of 30 or above is considered obese. (A 5-foot-10-inch adult who weighs between 174 and 208 pounds is considered overweight; above that is considered obese.)... But other researchers were not convinced, saying the findings are questionable for a number of reasons, including the fact that the weight data relied on the participants' recollections, which are notoriously unreliable, instead of direct measurements. Also, the sample was not necessarily representative of the general population, they said.