New York, Oct 6 AP - The largest study ever done on obesity and mortality has shown that overweight people run a higher rate of premature death -- even among people who didn't smoke and were otherwise healthy during their middle years.The study was conducted on one million Americans by the American Cancer Society and is published in tomorrow's New England Journal of Medicine. "The evidence is now compelling and irrefutable," said Dr JoAnn Manson, a Harvard University preventive-health specialist.

"Obesity is probably the second-leading preventable cause of death in the United States after cigarette smoking, so it is a very serious problem."

The study found an especially clear association between excess weight and a higher risk of dying from heart disease or cancer. And unlike a similar study last year that suggested being overweight is less of a problem as people grow older, this study found many more deaths among overweight people of all ages, especially those over 75.

More adults and children are overweight than ever before, with 55 percent of American adults weighing more than they should -- 67.5kg and up for a 165cm woman and 78.3kg for a 178cm man.

"The message is we're too fat and it's killing us. We need to come up with ways as a society to eat less and exercise more," said American Cancer Society epidemiologist Eugenia Calle, lead author of the study.

Black women were found to be the only exceptions to the rule. The study found the most obese black women did not have a significantly higher risk of premature death than slender black women.

Researchers said those results could be misleading, however, because black women of any weight have a higher risk of death than their white counterparts, probably because they have less access to health care than white women and have more undetected diseases.

The researchers studied participants from 1982 through to late 1996. The average age at enrolment was 57.

The scientists calculated each subject's body mass index, a ratio of weight to height, and tracked them for age and cause of death.

The study found that the fattest white men -- weighing in at 125kg on a 178cm frame - were 2.58 times more likely to die than their healthiest peers: men of the same height weighing 69 to 77kg.

White women weighing 108kg and standing 165cm were twice as likely to die as their counterparts who weighed 59 to 67kg

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