“”Initially, we thought we made a mistake,” said Le Strat, adding that he and co-author Bernard Le Foll checked the results several times to make sure they were correct.
“This is only a preliminary result. It doesn’t mean that marijuana does actually help you lose weight, but perhaps there is a component that does.”
The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, included two surveys of U.S. adults — one covering 43,000 people, the other about 9,300 respondents. Both had been conducted by branches of the U.S. National Institutes of Health between 2001 and 2009.
The larger of the surveys found that 14 percent of pot smokers were obese compared to 22 percent who didn’t smoke pot. Similarly, the smaller survey found 17 percent of pot smokers to be obese compared to 25 percent of non-smokers.”