Marriage makes you fat
Larissa Melville completed her traineeship in the editorial team of . After studying biology at Ludwig Maximilians University and the Technical University of Munich, she first got to know digital media online at Focus and then decided to learn medical journalism from scratch.
More about the experts All content is checked by medical journalists.MunichFinding a partner for life is a good thing. But there is a catch: married couples have more bacon on their ribs even though they eat healthier food.
More stable psyche, fewer heart attacks - married people enjoy better health than singles. But how does marriage affect body weight? Jutta Mata from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and colleagues from Basel University and the Society for Consumer Research have now investigated this question.
The team interviewed 3,780 married and 775 single men and women who had never tied the knot. The subjects came from nine different European countries - including Germany, France, Spain and Italy. In addition to the body mass index (BMI), the researchers were also interested in how consciously the participants were eating and how much exercise they did.
Singles are more figure conscious
The analysis of the data showed that marriage promotes hip gold: married people had a higher BMI than unmarried people. The BMI of the men awarded was on average 26.3, while that of the singles was 25.7. A similar picture emerged for women: female singles had a BMI that was on average 0.5 points lower. In concrete terms, this means a difference of around two kilos - and that is not good for the body. If you only look at the BMI, the marriage is not as beneficial to health as previously assumed, summarizes the researcher Mata the results.
In order to be sure that other factors such as age, nationality or social status are not responsible for the higher BMI, the researchers calculated these parameters out: The result was unchanged.
Couples prefer organic products
However, it turned out that the married test persons bought more regional and untreated food as well as organic products in general. In addition, they largely dispensed with finished products. "This suggests that when you are in a relationship, men are becoming more conscious of nutrition, and therefore probably healthier too," says Mata. However, married men also did less exercise.
Marriage changes behavior
“The results show how important social factors are for health. In this case it becomes clear that the institution of marriage and relevant behavioral changes in the context of marriage are directly related to diet and body weight, ”says Ralph Hertwig, co-author of the study.
Despite the higher BMI of the married couple, there is no question for Mata that married couples have health advantages over single persons: “They not only eat more consciously, they also have better resources and more social support. This also has a positive effect on your health, ”the expert told
The BMI is not only an indicator of a more or less full figure, but also of health risks. Because people with a BMI above the normal range (18.5 to 25) are more likely to develop chronic diseases such as diabetes or cardiovascular diseases - above all high blood pressure. They also have an increased risk of cancer.
Sources:
Mata J. et al .: Higher body mass index, less exercise, but healthier eating in married adults: Nine representative surveys across Europe. Social Science & Medicine. doi: 10.1016 / j.socscimed.2015.06.001
Press release from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development from June 29, 2015
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