A researcher at an international conference on obesity in Amsterdam said men who were grossly overweight at the age of 18 had a nearly 50 percent less chance of being married by their 30s and 40s, the AFP reported.
The European Association for the Study of Obesity hosted the four-day gathering on Thursday.
The results could suggest that women rank a man’s appearance higher than other traits when choosing a partner, as the data held true regardless of the men’s intellectual performance or socio-economic position.
Researcher Malin Kark of the Swedish Karolinska Institute medical university told AFP that could be one explanation.
Her study was conducted among more than 500,000 Swedish men born between 1951 and 1961 and found that men who had been obese at 18 were 46 percent less likely to be married in 1991, when they were aged between 30 and 40, than men with no weight problem, and 45 percent less likely by 2004.
The chances of marriage were somewhat higher for men who were overweight but not obese at 18, the study found. Chances were also 10 percent lower than for men of normal weight in their 30s and nine percent lower in their forties.
Kark believes the data shows that there is a stigmatization of obese young men that continues into adulthood and it appears to be evident in their working life as well as in inter-personal relationships.
She added that other studies have found that obese adolescents were likely to become obese adults.
No information was available on the men’s adult weight.
For the purposes of the study, a person with a body mass index (the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters) of more than 30 was considered obese.
Around 1.6 billion adults in 2005 were overweight, of which at least 400 million were obese, according to estimates from The World Health Organization.
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