Well, actually it appears that we are wrong!

We've all heard of overweight and obese people blaming their weight on the fact that they have big bones, and we politely nod in agreement. At the same time we are thinking that the person needs to face the truth that they are overweight because of eating habits and not because of their bones and we just put it down to another excuse for obesity.

Well, actually it appears that we are wrong! Science and research have proven that overweight people do in fact have bigger bones than normal weight people, so you had better be careful with what you say next time somebody with a weight problem tells you about their big bones!

The research done by a team at North Carolina State University looked at the skeletons of over a hundred men and the results show that those men who were overweight had bigger and wider femurs. They speculated that the reason for this is that overweight people move in a slightly different way to compensate for extra weight they are carrying and this encourages bone growth.

This information actually serves a very practical purpose because it will enable forensic investigators to determine more information about whether a person was overweight or not from their skeleton and this could have a big impact on forensic science. The researchers said that it would now be possible to identify with a considerable degree of accuracy whether a man was overweight and how overweight he was by simply looking at just one bone of the skeleton.

The downside of all of this research is that overweight people looking for an excuse about their size will now turn to this little bit of evidence and say that the reason they take up so much space has been medically proven to be linked to their bones. It might be worth pointing out to them gently that the bone size increase only relates to the femur and that the increase is minuscule compared to their weight.

The research was published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.