Being overweight can shorten your life, study says

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The study also found overweight people ran a higher risk of premature death, even if they were non-smokers and were otherwise healthy during their middle years.

"The evidence is now compelling and irrefutable," Dr. JoAnn Manson, a Harvard University endocrinologist and preventive-health specialist, said.

"Obesity is probably the second leading preventable cause of death in the United States after cigarette smoking, so it is a very serious problem."

The findings contradict another study released last year, which suggested excess weight is less of a problem as people grow older. The NEJM study, whose participants were an average age of 57 at the time of enrollment, found more deaths among overweight people of all ages, especially those over 75.

"About 55 percent of all U.S. adults are classified as overweight. And that continues to worsen with time. We're tending to get fatter and fatter as a society, and this increases our risk of death; and as I said, we need to find a way to turn this around," said American Cancer Society epidemiologist Eugenia Calle, lead author of the study.

Black women were found to be the only exception to the rule. Most obese black women studied did not have a significantly higher risk of early death than smaller black women.

This finding leaves some scientists puzzled. June Stevens, a University of North Carolina professor of nutrition, said, "Although I had seen this in several other studies, I wasn't ready to believe it was true.... Now I'm thinking maybe this is true, and we need to figure out why."

But both Stevens and Mason said the NEJM article probably understates the risk obesity presents to black women, pointing out that slender non-smoking black women already have a higher risk of death than non-smoking white women with a similar physical build.

They speculated that black women have less health care access than white women and therefore have more undetected disease. This could make it appear that weight alone is not a large factor in death rates among black women.

"It would be really unfortunate if we became more complacent about obesity in blacks than in whites," Manson said.

In the course of the study, researchers focused on body mass index (BMI), a standard measure that factors body weight and height, and tracked participants for age and cause of death.

BMI is calculated by taking a person's weight, multiplied by 704.5 and then divided by the person's height squared.

Healthy non-smoking white men, women and black men were found to have an increasing risk of death starting at a BMI of 25.

The largest white men, with a BMI of 40 or more, were found to be 2.58 times more likely to die than their healthiest peers. White women with a 40 or greater BMI were twice as likely as their healthiest counterparts to die early.

The findings were adjusted for age, education, physical activity, alcohol consumption, marital status, use of aspirin as a blood thinner, consumption of fats and vegetables and use of estrogen supplements.

Researchers also found thin women and men had a higher death rate, but it was not determined if this was due to their low weight or an effect of disease.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.