which is worse; morbid obesity or smoking?

Although I have seen numerous definitions of what we call “Gross Obesity” or MORBID OBESITY (50% or more over your ideal weight is a common one, as is 100 lbs over your ideal weight), this study defined you as “Morbidly Obese” if you were over 40 on a BMI CHART.  And I probably do not need to remind you just how bad SMOKING is for your health.  The latest issue of the medical journal PLOS Medicine puts it in perspective.

The study, which is actually a meta-analysis of 20 similar studies, compared 10,000 people who were Grossly Obese, but had no history of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, smoking, etc, to over 300,000 people of normal weight with no history of the same things.  The Obese group died anywhere from 6 to 14 years sooner than the normal weight group, depending on how obese they actually were.  They died mostly of Heart Disease, DIABETES, and CANCER.   By the way, this study was funded and completed by our National Cancer Institute.

According to the latest governmental statistics, one of six American adults is Grossly Obese.  Another three out of that same six are considered overweight or Obese.  Add in the fact that our children are getting larger and larger by the year (HERE) to the statistics on something called MONW (“Skinny Fat” — approximately 7% of our population would fall into this category), and you can see that the Westernized World has a serious problem on its hands.  If you are interested in losing weight, HERE are a number of articles to help get you started.