No, that can't be right. Do you have sources to those statistics, as they seem way more drastic than I would have thought. E.g., after looking around online fo

No, that can't be right. Do you have sources to those statistics, as they seem way more drastic than I would have thought. E.g., after looking around online for a bit, I found this[1] which indicates 300,000 deaths each year are attributable to obesity, which is 12.5% of deaths[2]. Furthermore, the magnitude of the the effect doesn't seem to be 15-20 years. This wikipedia section[3] indicates that being "obese" lowers life expectancy by 2-4 years. Being "severely obese" lowers it by 10 years. But according to these statistics[4], "severely obese" is ~10% of the population. So I think 1/3 of the US population dying before age 60 because of obesity is way, way off the mark. More like 10% dying at 68 and maybe half the population dying at 75 because of obesity rather than 78. [1] http://www.wvdhhr.org/bph/oehp/obesity/mortality.htm http://www.wvdhhr.org/bph/oehp/obesity/mortality.htm [2] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity#Mortality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity#Mortality [4] http://www.nber.org/papers/w13181 http://www.nber.org/papers/w13181