Obesity weighs more heavily on women than men (Reuters, 27 July)

Being overweight puts a greater burden on women's health than men's, a new study shows. Dr. Peter Muennig of Columbia University in New York and colleagues calculated the amount of illness due to overweight and obesity in the USA. They found that overweight cost US women 1.8 million years of perfect health, compared to just 270,000 years lost for men. Obesity cost women 3.40 million years of perfect health, compared to 1.94 million years for men. Muennig suggested in an interview that this gender difference could be due to the social stigma that excess weight carries for women but not for men..

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