Lesbians twice as likely to be obese

The Australian Daily Telegraph reports:

Lesbians are twice as likely as heterosexual women to be overweight or obese, which puts them at greater risk for obesity-related health problems and death, US researchers said.

The report, published in the American Journal of Public Health, is one of the first large studies to look at obesity among lesbians.

Ulrike Boehmer of the Boston University School of Public Health and colleagues looked at a 2002 national survey of almost 6000 women, and found that lesbians were 2.69 times more likely to be overweight and 2.47 times more likely to be obese.

“Lesbians have more than twice the odds of (being) overweight,” the authors wrote. ...

“The results of these studies indicate that lesbian women have a better body image than do heterosexual women,” they wrote.

Huhh? A better body image because they are fat? I would have said the opposite.

The argument does not say whether lesbianism causes obesity, or whether obesity causes lesbianism.