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.