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This criticism is apparently quite reasonable. You can also observe that being underweight is correlated with smoking.

[Edited to add: this article explicitly considers the link to cancer, and rejects it, https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1... ]

However, it doesn't explain why being 'overweight' BMI consistently proves to be protective against death, despite it being so stigmatised that it affects quality of medical care.

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> However, it doesn't explain why being 'overweight' BMI consistently proves to be protective against death

I don't see how the "protective of death" conclusion is able to be maintained when it was determined by comparing the mortality of overweight people to frail and dying old people and cancer patients. The reality is that it's the opposite. It's well known that being overweight damages the organs and makes a person more susceptible to dozens of diseases.

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