“Contrary to the stigma of pot smokers being fat and lazy, driven to chow down on Doritos and Milk Duds by the ever-so-common “munchies” effect of cannabis, new studies show that pot smokers are less likely to be obese than non-smokers.

The cannabis study was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, led by Dr. Yann Le Strat, a psychiatrist at Louis-Mourier Hospital in Colombes, France. He and his colleagues studied the weight differences between pot smokers and non-pot smokers based on two epidemiologic studies of U.S. adults. Non-pot smokers weighed in with 22%-25.3% obesity rates. Those who toke at least three times a week had obesity rates of just 14.3-17.2%. That means pot smokers are far more likely to be thin than their non-smoking counterparts.

Say what? The researchers did a double take, too. They hypothesized that since marijuana is known to increase appetites, surely smokers would weight more. Le Strat and his colleagues were so surprised by the results in the first study that they reassessed a completely different sample and found the same results.

“We found that cannabis users are less likely to be obese than non-users,” said Le Strat, as quoted by MSNBC. “We were so surprised, we thought we had [made] a mistake. Or that our results were due to the sample we studies. So we turned to another completely independent sample and found exactly the same association.””

 http://blog.420petition.com/international-marijuana-news/cannabis-research-cures-obesity/