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Health

People who are naturally slim have smaller and more active fat cells

By Alice Klein

31 August 2019

woman with chocolate

We’ve found clues to explain why some people never get fat

iprogressman/iStock/Getty

They’re the lucky few: people who can eat as much as they like without gaining weight. A new study suggests they can do this because their fat cells burn energy differently – a finding that could lead to new obesity treatments.

Nele Gheldof at the Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences in Switzerland and her colleagues studied 30 men and women who remain very slim – with BMIs of 18.5 or under – despite eating and exercising the same amount as the average person.

By analysing small fat samples sliced from…

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