One of the scourges of modern life may have been profoundly misunderstood

BEING fat is bad for you. On that, almost everyone agrees. It is just possible, though, that almost everyone is wrong. In fact, getting fat may be a mechanism that protects the body. The health problems associated with fatness may not be caused by it but be another consequence, another symptom, of overeating.

That is the heretical proposal of Roger Unger and Philipp Scherer. Dr Unger and Dr Scherer, who work at the University of Texas, in Dallas, have been reviewing the science of what has come to be known as metabolic syndrome. This is a cluster of symptoms such as high blood pressure, insulin resistance and fatness that seem to increase the risk of heart disease and strokes, late-onset diabetes and liver disease. Metabolic syndrome is found in a sixth of the American population. …