CDC Claims US Gamers Are Old, Fat, Depressed

Maybe these findings would be painfully obvious to some, but the CDC did a survey in the Seattle-Tacoma area--gee, why'd they pick on us?--and found that the average gamer was 35 years old, overweight and more depressed than non-gamers.

Said a CDC official:

"'Health risk factors, specifically a higher BMI and a larger number of poor mental-health days, differentiated adult video-game players from non-gamers,' he said. 'Video game players also reported lower extraversion, consistent with research on adolescents that linked video-game playing to a sedentary lifestyle and overweight status.'"

Doing this as a survey isn't particularly convincing and the BMI simply isn't a powerful measure of body weight, but it's all semi-interesting. However, a CDC official claiming that a higher BMI (relative to what absolute?) is a health risk factor when there's evidence that being slightly overweight is better than being thin strikes me as pure propaganda.