As the New Year rolls in and we ladies roll out that treadmill and dust off that diet book yet again, let us pause for a moment and reflect on a few choice pieces of information. Curvy isn’t just better for the heart, it’s better for the brain. Before you get too worked up about your weight, take a gander at your waist first.
A Study Has Been Done
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, Santa Barbara took a good look at 16,000 women and found the hourglass-figure correlated closely with intelligence. The results of cognitive tests showed women with a lower waist-to-hip ratio outgunning their thicker counterparts. The findings will be published this week in the journal, Evolution and Human Behavior.
A Calculated Effort
Coming up with your waist-to-hip ratio is done by dividing your waist size by your hip size (waist ÷ hip = ratio). The smaller the number, the better (less than 1.0 is good; .8 is ideal).
The Omega Woman
Believe it or not, fat is the answer to your weight question. The amount of omega-3 fatty acids in a woman's hips and thighs is a key indicator of her heart health. It’s also important for the health of her brain - and the brain of any child she may bear.
Oh, Baby!
The curvier woman, recognizable by her pear (or hourglass) shape, has more reserves of omega-3. This not only nourishes her brain, this is crucial for fetal brain development in the third trimester of pregnancy.
Got Fat?
Dr. Andrew Weil already knew omega-3 fatty acids were good for us, and suggests the healthiest sources are cold-water fish (such as salmon, sardines, herring, mackerel, black cod, and bluefish) and plant foods (specifically flax seeds, walnuts, hemp seeds, and certain greens like purslane). The best source for this fatty acid, says Dr. Weil, is ground flax seed.
Article comments
1 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
To think,
They had to do a study to figure out that a sexy girl with a cute figure was healthier and more attractive than a girl who didn't have a sexy figure.
Next up! A study on why water is wet!!
2 - Diana Hartman
imagine a world where the dairy farmers all got together and successfully marketed milk as the number one best beverage ever and that, by comparison, “water is dry and listless" or something equally ridiculous...
imagine images of milk plastered all over the place as a great thing - in movies, non-dairy ads, TV programs, you name it...because it wasn’t good enough to tout their product, the dairy farmers have also gone on the rampage against water...imagine every image of water with a slanted, red line through it " when it is seen, which is rare in this scenario, compared to images of milk...
now imagine a health crisis among certain demographics wherein the health of a significant percentage of the population was severely compromised because they stopped drinking water based on their belief in the dairy commercials, and instead drank milk " almost to the exclusion of any other beverage...
at that point it would well take a scientific study proving the value and worth of water to get the most avid milk-only drinkers to concede...
if you think this couldn’t happen, take a gander at the fashion industry whose stick-thin, shapeless models have given rise to weight-obsessed children as young as four, pathological weight obsession in grown women, and eating disorders...why?
because they believe(d) the ads, the images, the words, and the frequency of the thin-is-in campaign...they believed it when told no man would want them and all women would scorn them if they couldn’t fit into a size 2 dress...they ignored what little imagery there was/is of the healthier, curvy, hasn’t-seen-size-10-since-she-was-16 woman " because that’s what they’ve been told and told and told to do...
now that science has confirmed what the not-weight-obsessed population has always known, maybe now we can start to fast track some of those who are weight-obsessed back onto the right track...
3 - P A DEPLAND
Evidently the article was written by a thick waisted Twiggy type (opposite from hour-glass) and it went to her head. It would take a 2.8 inch
waist divided by 34 inch hips to come up with her ideal .08 ratio! A healthy female figure, from a man's point of view, would be an hour-glass shaped (34-24-34)or(36-26-36), either, yielding an ideal .7 ratio. On the other hand a .7 ratio begat from a pear shaped (24-24-34)or(26-26-36) would be classified as unhealthy and undesirable.
4 - Matthew T. Sussman
Next up: Blindness and the effects of curvy women on adolescent boys.
5 - Diana Hartman
P A,
the article stands corrected (see article)...you are however, most incorrect about the .7 ratio...if you'd like to discuss it further, take it up with cambridge mathematicians...
a woman is not unhealthy just because she is small-breasted...
6 - Vianka
Just what we need - another stereotype for women. Now slim women are not as intelligent as chunky women? That is ridiculous! Does anybody get sick of hearing how women's bodies should look?
7 - fed up
can there be an article promoting healthy body image instead of bashing one body type over another. I do not believe that intelligence is based on body type.All men do not like the same type of women.
8 - karen
PA Depland, not sure what you mean about pear shapes being 'unhealthy' or 'undesirable' but a pear does not have the same bust and waist measurement, it's more just a case there is less difference between waist and bust than waist and hips, for example 31-24-34 or 33-26-36....perfectly ideal and very natural for a healthy female.
Yes I'm a pear and I have measurements 32-25-36...bigger on bottom than the top yes, but still a normal difference between my bust and waist and I'm certainly healthy and my husband thinks I'm desireable.
9 - karen
BTW a 'healthy' waist/hip ratio = <0.8, but curvy & ideal = 0.65-0.75 (and that is regardless of bust size).