In a world that seems overran with bad news, on both personal and national levels, it was a small moment of good news that seemed designed to calm us down and let us catch our breath.

Well, a certain segment of us anyway. The story, which I saw on The New York Times website, said research had shown that those who are "pleasingly plump" have a good chance of living longer than those who are obese and, surprisingly, those who have a "normal" body weight.

It was a government study that made this claim, stating that 100 years ago, a woman who stood 5'7 and weighed 171 pounds would have been considered the perfect woman. By today's standards that body mass index (BMI) thing would classify her as overweight, but not quiet put her into being obese.

The study, which is already coming under fire, studied 3 million people and found those whose BMI index ranged between 25-29 (overweight) had a longer life expectancy than those whose BMI fell under 25 (normal weight).

It also showed that those who were in the early stages of being obese (BMI of 30-34) didn't really appear to die any earlier than those with a normal body weight.

The main criticism being leveled at the study is it only looked at BMI and didn't take other health factors into account. There was nothing about exactly what kind of shape the pleasingly plump are in, family history, how active a person is and so on.

Some nutrition expert appeared on one of the Knoxville TV stations and basically went into hysterics while declaring the study a fraud. She had some valid points, mainly the old horse about how somebody like a 6'2 250 pound NFL linebacker would be declared obese by the BMI scale even though he's covered in muscles and his body fat percentage is 5.

Having spent most of my life being overweight, but nowhere near obese, I'm a little heartened by this study. I have no idea how long I'm going to live (and hopefully never will as that would mean either a terminal diagnosis or somebody has told me they're going to kill me and proceeds to do just that), but I'd like to think I'll get to somewhere around the average of 78 years.

The study said fat isn't as bad as we've always thought, though it mainly depends on where it's at. Belly fat is always bad, but fat around the thighs and butt area has come to be considered basically harmless, which should make Sir Mix A Lot happy.

There are even claims that fat can be protective in some cases, but that is not a universal belief and some researchers are ready to fight over such a claim.

A lot depends on how physically active a person is. A 5'10 person who weighs 210 but walks 30 minutes a day along with other activities that don't involve sitting at a desk, is better off than a 5'10 person who weighs 190 but never moves except to walk from the house to the car and vice versa.

And enough can't be said about the family history thing. Take a look at the people around you. It doesn't have to be your ancient ancestors. How is the health of your parents? Grandparents? Heck, look at your siblings, if you have any, and aunts, uncles, cousins, whatever else you might find under the family tree.

Are they all in pretty good shape or do they have an undertaker following them around, saying, "Any minute now!" And if you have those relatives who claim they always feel bad, but never really seem to have anything wrong (you know who I'm talking about), you can put them on the healthy side.

And what about that perfect woman from a hundred years ago? Well, since she didn't have of the technology we have to make our lives easier, nor all the processed fast food, she probably would have been involved in some kind of farm work, ate lots of homegrown food and she would have been thought of as "stout."

And like that NFL linebacker, her body fat percentage was probably somewhere between 5-10 percent. You don't want to know what yours is. Trust me.

michael.thomason@advocateanddemocrat.com | 442-4575