Go ahead and buy that junk food after all

Marketers of fattening foods should distribute a billion reprints of a new study that says being overweight maybe isn’t so bad. The lead of the Washington Post’s summary of the findings: “Being overweight boosts the risk of dying from diabetes and kidney disease but not cancer or heart disease, and carrying some extra pounds appears actually to protect against a host of other causes of death, federal researchers reported today.” Indeed, the research, led by a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that overweight people’s higher mortality rates from diabetes and kidney disease were more than offset by below-average death rates from other causes.