Italian researchers announced in Annals of Internal Medicine (AIM) this week the discovery of a beer gut gene passed from generation to generation via traditional laws of heredity. Men who received a copy of the so-called “angiotensin-converting enzyme” gene from both their father and mother were twice as likely to have beer bellies compared to those who received a copy of the gene from only one or neither of their parents. This news is a gutshot, so to speak, when tied to another AIM study in the same issue which analysed the medical records of 3500 US adults who were middle-aged in 1950. It found that women obese at the age of 40 lost 7.1 years of life, while obese men lost 5.8 years. Even being overweight at 40, rather than obese, shortens life expectancy by around three years. The results were even more stark for smokers, with overweight adults dying seven years before their non-smoking counterparts, and obese smokers dying 13 to 14 years earlier. This work is further supported by a similar study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which found an obese 20-year-old man may have his life expectancy cut by as many as 13 years compared with normal-weight people. For an obese 20-year-old woman, the reduction is 8 years. The data is unambiguous: obesity kills. Don’t give up on those New Year’s dieting resolutions just yet.