Blogs written by fat people — and it’s fine to use the word, they say — have multiplied in recent months, filling a virtual soapbox known as the fatosphere, where bloggers calling for fat acceptance challenge just about everything conventional medical wisdom has to say about obesity.

A study published in the July issue of Economic Inquiry raises that question. With roughly two-thirds of the American population overweight or obese, have our cultural ideals of what we consider “normal weight” changed?

Just in time for the holidays, the economists Roy Wada and Erdal Tekin have a new NBER working paper they’ve tactfully named “Body Composition and Wages.” It contains bad news for those planning to overindulge. The abstract reads, in part:

Even those who are not overweight should slim down if they want to cut their risk of cancer, a major international study has claimed.