This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Exercise  • Obesity  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: Dr Fontaine and colleagues¹ reported that "overweight and obesity (among blacks) may not decrease life expectancy until a body mass index (BMI) of approximately 32-33 for men and 37-38 for women is reached." I am concerned that may give a false interpretation of the importance of BMI among blacks compared with whites.

Reports from the follow-up of the Cancer Prevention Study II^2-3 found that that the age standardized death rates for black women were substantially higher than for white women for all BMI categories except at very high levels of BMI (>40). For men, the death rates were also substantially higher across BMI categories for black men vs white men.

The results of Fontaine et al may give a false impression that blacks are less affected by obesity than are whites. This apparent paradox seems due to the high death rates at lower BMI among blacks than . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?