A tipple or two a day will keep you trim

A new study suggests that people who have an alcoholic drink or two a day may have a lower risk of becoming obese than either teetotalers or heavy drinkers.

It seems that researchers in the U.S. have found that among more than 8,200 U.S. adults, those who said they enjoyed a drink every day were 54 percent less likely than non-drinkers to be obese.

Similarly, those who drank a little more (two drinks per day) or a little less (a few drinks per week) had a lower risk of obesity than teetotalers did.

However heavy drinking, apparently raised the odds of obesity, with people who downed four or more drinks a day 46 percent more likely to be obese than non-drinkers.

Binge drinkers also showed a greater prevalence of obesity.

Study co-author James E. Rohrer, a professor of health services research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, says that previous studies have linked moderate drinking to better heart health, but only a few have looked at the relationship between drinking and body weight and it is a fairly new line of research.

Rohrer says it is possible that the lower prevalence of obesity among moderate drinkers may explain the lower risk of heart disease.

Rohrer does however stress that the findings do not imply that overweight people should take up drinking for the sake of their waistlines, as alcohol is high in calories, and it's not yet clear why moderate drinking is related to less risk of obesity.

The study findings are based on data from a national health survey of Americans age 18 and older, conducted between 1988 and 1994 and the researchers focused their analysis on 8,236 participants who had never smoked.

Rohrer noted that overall, half of the current drinkers were in the normal weight range, as against only about one-quarter of non-drinkers.

Rohrer and colleague Dr. Ahmed Arif say why this is so is unclear.

They apparently factored in the "usual suspects" in heart disease risk, such as age, exercise levels, education and income, and moderate drinking was still related to lower odds of obesity.

Although he cautions against taking up drinking to trim the waistline, Rohrer says the findings suggest that completely cutting out alcohol might backfire as a weight-loss plan.

The findings are published online in the journal BMC Public Health, December 5, 2005.