1951

In US, launching of massive campaign against overweight led by Louis Dublin of MLIC and deriving from his flawed studies on weight and mortality. E.g., his policyholders were a self-selected population of Anglo-Saxons insured between 1925 & 1934; many were probably overweight to begin with (healthy overweight persons didn’t buy life insurance; unhealthy overweight sought out the policies); applicants were weighed clothed and shod, at least 20% reported their own weights, they were weighed only when they bought their premiums, so that age and weight gain over time were not factored into the MLIC studies that led to his notion of “ideal weight” (first published in 1942 & 43). He didn’t consider other variables (e.g., chronic illness among elderly) that correlated with weight (older people weigh more) but was not a product of obesity. Overweight is a symptom of mature-onset diabetes, not its cause (Seid, 116-119).