This is a fascinating article in Nature showing evidence that being slightly overweight may be healthier.
Of course, the real morsel of truth in the whole article is that the BMI (Body Mass Index) isn’t exactly the most fine-tuned way of measuring health. :
All this suggests that BMI is a crude measure for evaluating the health of individuals. Some researchers contend that what really matters is the distribution of fat tissue on the body, with excess abdominal fat being most dangerous; others say that cardiovascular fitness predicts mortality regardless of BMI or abdominal fat. “BMI is just a first step for anybody,” says Steven Heymsfield, an obesity researcher and the executive director of the Pennington Biological Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “If you can then add waist circumference and blood tests and other risk factors, then you can get a more complete description at the individual level.”