Michael Fumento

"To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals." So observed Benjamin Franklin centuries ago. But Franklin didn't comment on whether food intake restriction worked by keeping people thin or by making them thin. Indeed, it's become a mantra of the "size acceptance" groups that there's no scientific evidence that losing weight increases longevity. And it's been true - until now, as I write in The American Spectator Online.

I also write about those who have found their life's calling in catering to delusional overweight people, which can be a lucrative market insofar as two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. One, Paul Campos, author of The Obesity Myth, insisted that 40 percent reduced mortality over seven years was "at best" a "very, very modest effect." Not just "very," but "very, very!"

Then there's Sandy Szwarc, nurse and cookbook author, properly labeled "a bigwig in the fat acceptance movement." Regarding the new studies, she calls it a "leap of logic" to assume that there is a correlation between the bariatric surgery and subsequent dramatic weight loss and the "purported improved mortalities." Purported? And apparently it wasn't the weight loss that extended survival time but either divine intervention or alien abductions.