Oh no, I thought, as I walked to the train yesterday. Another newspaper with the word 'FAT' plastered all over the front page. Here we go again.

Imagine my surprise when I read on the front of the Independent:

"Now being fat could be good for you"

I thought I might be hallucinating, but I bought the paper and read it on the train. Oh yes, it would seem that a new study in the Journal of the Amercian Medical Association says there is a "grey" area where being up to around a stone and a half overweight may not be the life ending disaster that we've all been led to believe. But no doubt this piece of news will be superceded by another scare story soon, so we'd better make the most of it.

OK, it makes sense that if you are starving yourself to death, morbidly obese, or the nearest you get to working out is wearing trainers to drive in, you probably won't be all that healthy. But there is no way of telling that someone is healthy based on their BMI alone. It's just rubbish, and frankly always has been, even before some clever doctor gave people with a muffin top a reprieve.

The study is the second carried out by US Government scientists who two years ago first suggested that deaths from being too fat were overstated. Well, I'm sure there were many people who could have told them that, but everyone knows we need statistics before we'll believe anything these days.

The report further analyses the same data, this time looking at specific causes of death along with new mortality figures from 2004 for 2.3million U.S. adults.  Lead researcher Dr Katherine Flegal, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which funded the study, said:

"Excess weight does not uniformly increase the risk of mortality from any and every cause, but only from certain causes."

WEll, the Americans know all about being fat so I'll take my chances...

...and what's more, overweight people were up to about 40 per cent less likely than normal-weight people to die from several other causes including emphysema, pneumonia, injuries and various infections. So a little extra padding doesn't hurt, then?

I find it quite useful when sitting on hard chairs, personally....