Ukmedix has learnt of a fascinating new study that looks into the relationship between obesity and lifestyle and to what extent obesity is considered to be a handicap. The study carried out by a Yale University Food and Obesity Research Centre looked at the way that people valued not being obese and asked what they would give up in order to stay slim and trim.

For example nearly 50% of the 4,283 people interviewed said that they would strike off a year off their lives than live with obesity and incredibly 15% would give up 10 years. Over 600 participants in the survey said that they would give up 10 years of life to stay thin and nearly 350 said if faced with a choice between a learning disabled child or an obese child they would have the former.

Thirty percent said that being divorced would be better than being obese and 25% said that they would rather be infertile than obese. Fifteen percent and 14% respectively rated severe depression and alcoholism better than obesity. Incredibly 10% even said that they would prefer to have an anorexic child over an obese oned.

The researchers asked many questions and determined the extent to which people would go to to ensure that they would never suffer from obesity and they were also surprised about the extreme stigma associated with obesity in some people's minds. In fact the survey also showed that being overweight can also be associated subconciously in people's heads with being bad and with thin people being good and also that overweight people are perceived as being lazy and lacking determination to achieve weight loss.

This perception of obesity and laziness can even add to the problem of being overweight as fat people themselves begin to believe it and this saps the desire and determination to lose weight. People who have been overweight since childhood suffer from the belief that they are lazy more than people who put on weight later on in life.