National and international health organizations have focused increasingly on a perceived obesity epidemic said to pose drastic threats to public health.

some medical experts have gone so far as to predict that growing body mass will halt and perhaps even reverse the millennia-long trend of rising human life expectancy

a growing number of researchers, drawn from a broad array of academic disciplines, are calling these claims into question

the available scientific data neither support alarmist claims about obesity nor justify diverting scarce resources away from far more pressing public health issues

This article evaluates four central claims made by those who are calling for intensifying the war on fat: that obesity is an epidemic; that overweight and obesity are major contributors to mortality; that higher than average adiposity is pathological and a primary direct cause of disease; and that significant long-term weight loss is both medically beneficial and a practical goal.