Does this mean they die less than other people?

Whatever, the news is obviously upbeat compared to last week's scare that obesity is killing us....

A group of federal researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute reports that there were more than 100,000 fewer deaths among the overweight in 2004, the most recent year for which data were available, than would have expected if those people had been of normal weight.

The group links causes of deaths to specific weights. Overweight people have a lower death rate because they are much less likely to die from diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, infections and that lower risk is not counteracted by increased risks of dying from any other disease, including cancer, diabetes or heart disease.

Their paper is published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Morimoto could be the best chef in the world but if he wasn’t a star of Iron chef, he couldn’t get a cookbook (Morimoto – The New Art of Japanese Cooking) published. I know, I know, there are far far too many cookbooks published and so many of them are repetitious – for heaven’s sakes how many books about baking bread could anyone want? But now it’s hard to get a any cookbook published unless you’re a TV star.

I’m not crazy about Iron Chef because I think it infantilizes food and cooking, but after sampling Morimoto’s cooking last week at a dinner at the restaurant Rain, which was part of his book tour, I did admire his imagination and technical skill. He’s the Faberge of the kitchen, a jeweller who designs food as eye candy, the long plates are display cases of diamonds, emeralds and rubies. Trouble is that the food’s appearance overwhelms its taste. Tasty food has so many different stages, first the smell and then the sensation of the food on the lips, in the runnels of the gums, on top and beneath the tongue, on the roof of the mouth…. But this ornamental food tends to be a singular sensation.

By far the most beautiful dish was a line of tiny saranwrapped pouches of caviar served on lemon cream. Dazzlingly ingenious with a subtle, elusive taste. The saranwrap turns out to be melt-in-the mouth obrato, a clear gel made from soy lecithin, one of the popular ingredients in molecular cooking. I eagerly turn to the recipe – is there any way I can make this? Confusion. The glossary says that obrato is made from water mixed with either rice flour of the pith of the stems from the rice-paper plant – not soy lecithin at all! And I’m not told whether I have to make obrato myself or whether I can buy it in readymade sheets. I google for advice, and check the cookbook’s sources, all in the US, without much success. I can have huge sheets of soy lecithin sent to me for insulation.

I have another go at a recipe. Morimoto Sashimi and Toro Tartare is a colourfield painting, two exquisite boxes, one containing mashed tuna and a line of caviare, the other containing lines of sour cream, guacomole, chives, wasabi and crunched up rice cracker. “This is a dish you could actually replicate at home” advises the copy.

Easy for the book to say but where’s the list of ingredients and techniques for replication?

And by including this advisory, the publisher suggests that the other recipes could not be made at home. If so, why a book at all?

I sample sugared salmon: it tastes like an inadvertent mix of leftovers - as if something fishy had fallen into a dessert.

I wonder who will try Morimoto’s recipes - then I realize it really doesn’t matter. The Iron Chef fans are no doubt falling over themselves to buy the book to go on their coffee tables beside the remote.