By Amanda Hess - Last week, The Daily Mail profiled Stacey Irvine, a teenage English factory worker who claims to subsist almost exclusively on McDonald's chicken nuggets and fries. According to the Mail, Irvine has suffered from breathing problems, anemia, and inflamed veins due to her diet...Irvine is thin. Her health problems are not related to obesity, and they won't be solved by stapling her stomach. Yet we're so culturally hardwired to believe that unhealthy equals fat and vice versa that even photographic evidence (full-body photographs of Irvine were attached to the PR email) isn't enough to break the habit...

No one should administer moral judgements on the basis of a person's body, not just because those types of observations are rude, but also because they're wrong. A constellation of studies shows that heavier patients are more likely to survive cardiac events; that fat can help protect against a variety of diseases, including diabetes; and that fat people often live longer than thin ones. A recent 16-year study on the issue underlined the fact that a nutritious diet and sufficient exercise does not necessarily correspond to a slim body mass index and that attempting to lose weight can do more harm than good.

Yes, fat can be healthy. Thin can be unhealthy.

Photo: Daily Mail