Nutritionists have warned for years that if your body is over normal weight, you are on a fast route to an early grave - but according to an American report published today, a little excess weight actually makes you healthier.

Far from being a guarantee of an early death, a few extra pounds actually leave you less at risk than someone of ‘normal’ weight.

The study, an analysis of mortality rates and body-mass index (BMI), did indeed find that obesity and extreme obesity causes some 112,000 deaths in the United States every year.

Being classified as slightly overweight, however, with a BMI between 25 and 30, prevents around 86,000 deaths. And in an extra source of satisfaction for those who have suffered by comparison with the more slender sisters and brothers, being very thin is linked to 33,700 extra US deaths each year.

In an attempt to explain this reversal of orthodox thinking, researchers at the government backed Centre for Disease Control, which published the report, said that it was possible that being fat presents a lower health risk today than in the past.

They found that high blood pressure and cholesterol levels are less prevalent today than 30 or 40 years ago, partly because of medical breakthroughs and perhaps too because people are looking after themselves better.

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