People who are slightly overweight or mildly obese  have a lower risk of early death than normal weight individuals(;), according to a new analysis of nearly 100 international studies. The studies, most conducted within the past decade, included about three million adults from around the world. The result of these studies by researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics in Maryland, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows that slightly overweight or obese people were six percent less likely to die from all causes compared to people of normal weight. But the researchers found that seriously obese individuals were still at a 30 percent greater risk of death compared to healthy-weight individuals. Study lead author Katherine Flegal says she was not surprised that overweight people would not have a higher death risk. "Because we'd actually already read a lot of this literature and realized that death rates for overweight would be at least not higher than normal[weight," she said. "I guess l was a little bit surprised that it was definitely lower. And l was also surprised that the lower rates of obesity didn't seem to differ from normal weight." But Flegal stresses the difference in death rates appear to be small between normal-weight people and overweight and mildly obese individuals. The finding by Flegal and colleagues have raised new questions about the reliability of the so-called "body mass index" or BMI, a measurement of body fat as a ratio(,)of height to weight, that has become popular in recent years among public healthexperts to measure potential health risks. But Heymsfield warns that individuals should not conclude that it's okay to put on extra kilograms, since being at a healthy weight lowers the risk for heart disease and diabetes. Katherine Flegal feels surprised at the fact that  _  .
obese people have higher death rates slightly obese people have lower death rates obese people tend to die early death rates have nothing to do with body weight