Not only does being fat put you at risk of obesity and heart attack, it also makes you dumb.

A French study found that those with a BMI of 20 or less recalled more than fatter people in a series of mental tests, and did even better if retested five years later. Can't wait for Mireille Guiliano's next offering: French Women Don't Get Fat Or Stupid.

Dr Maxime Cournot, who headed the study, suggested that hormones secreted from fats could have a damaging effect on cerebral cells, resulting in decreased brain function. "Another explanation could be that since obesity is a widely known cardiovascular risk factor, due to the thickening and hardening of the blood vessels, that the same happens with the arteries in the brain," said Dr Cournot, an assistant professor in clinical epidemiology at Toulouse University Hospital.

Bollocks, said a former UK Tory MP: "You just need to look around the world and you will see hundreds of thin nitwits and clever fat people."

One would hope they measured how smart people were before the tests. And that they didn't just pick a bunch of thick fatties and thin brainboxes. Or maybe you have to be a little silly to become obese in the first place.

Instead of planning gameshows on the basis of how well people can spell by job categories or put up a makeshift hut by ethnic origins, perhaps we should come clean and get a serious fatty v skinny thing going on. Let's not pretend for a moment that Survivor, for instance, would put somebody really ugly on the island. And by ugly I mean fat. The idea of bien dans sa peau doesn't cut it in the real world, let alone the unreal one.