Facts About Fat

Although most doctors concede that excess fat is a factor in many illnesses, they disagree about its causes, relative danger, and effective control among 34 million overweight Americans. At Iowa State College last week, top U.S. obesity experts gathered to exchange the latest news about fat. Among the reports: P: Being overweight isn't so much of a health problem as most people think, said Dr. Ancel Keys, of the University of Minnesota. Insurance company statistics linking excessively high heart-disease fatalities to overweight do not mean that every chubby person must reduce, since fat and overweight are not always related, e.g., muscle-heavy football players are generally overweight, but rarely need to diet. Reliance on simple body-weight control can easily miss the real problem: dealing with the so-called degenerative diseases, e.g., heart and artery ailments. P: Despite all the current emphasis on dieting, reported Harvard's Dr. Jean Mayer, doctors have had little practical success so far in developing sound reducing diets--mostly because they explain obesity simply as the result of "overeating" and let it go at that. Moreover, the value of regular exercise is ignored, due to a popular misconception that physical activity leads only to more eating, more calories. Required before doctors can accurately diagnose and prescribe: a system of recognizing various types of obesity, precise accounts of obesity patients' family history, exact data on the body's normal food intake (some people's systems require more and different foods than others). P: When should weight be brought under some kind of control? Dr. Ercel Eppright, Iowa State's top nutritionist, suggested that weight control should begin during childhood. Thanks to TV and the automobile, children are getting less exercise, spending playtime indoors gobbling high-calorie snacks and soda pop. P: Overweight is spreading more rapidly among white men and less rapidly among white women, reported the U.S. Public Health Service's Dr. James Hundley. Since 1912, the average white man's weight has gone up five Ibs.; white women have actually lost the same amount, evidently doing their best to keep up with fashion designers.

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