‘Getting Married Makes You Add Weight’ – Study

Getting married really isn’t good for your weight, researchers have found.

They say that married couples have higher body mass index (BMI) than those who are single.

Researchers at the University of Basel and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development worked with GfK to compare the body mass index of married couples with that of singles in nine European countries.

They found married couples on average eat better than singles, but that they also weigh significantly more and do less sport.

The results of their study have now been published in the journal Social Science & Medicine.

The researchers compared the relationship between marital status and body mass index, which relates body weight to height.

According to the World Health Organization, a normal body mass index is between 18.5 and 25. Overweight is defined as an index between 25 and 30, and obesity as above 30. 

The average body mass index of the single men in the study was 25.7; that of the married men was 26.3. For women, the average index was 25.1 for singles and 25.6 for married women.

‘Our findings show …that the institution of marriage and certain changes in behavior within that context are directly related to nutrition and body weight,’ says Ralph Hertwig, Director of the Center for Adaptive Rationality at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

The study also shows that married men do less sport than singles.

 Source: DailyMail