Little more fat means lot less life

Simply being overweight, but not obese, from an early age boosts the risk of premature death by a third - as much as smoking up to 10 cigarettes a day, researchers in Sweden reported yesterday.

People who are clinically obese by the age of 18 more than double that risk, putting themselves in the same danger zone as long-term heavy smokers of normal weight, they found.

And combining the two factors accumulates the risk: an obese heavy smoker, for example, is nearly five times as likely to die prematurely than a non-smoker who is neither too thin nor too fat.