Jun 22, 2009

CPC Fellow Penny-Gordon Larsen, Ph. D., an associate professor of nutrition at UNC, and her research on increased weight gain in couples who live together were featured on NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, a weekly comedy news-quiz program. The show, which was taped in UNC’s Memorial Hall, ran this past weekend.

The study was cited on the “Limericks” section of the show, in which a caller fills in the blank of a news-related limerick.

“I move in with my girlfriend,” starts the limerick, “That’s that, what we do is well we ate talk and sat, we’re together that’s it, we don’t need to be fit, we cohabit so we can get ___ (fat).”

The host, Peter Sagal, went on to explain that the study shows the longer couples live together, the more likely they are to “bloom up like Java the Hut” because married couples and couples who live together tend to eat larger meals together and may watch TV together instead of working out.  

The study also stresses that young couples should try to have a more positive influence on each other.

“Experts recommend that one or two nights a week the couple reverts and eat like they’re single again,” Sagal said during the show. “Meaning for the woman, a quart of Haagen Daz and for the man, a bag of potato chips eaten over the sink.”

The show can be found on NPR’s website below under “Limericks”:

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=35

The UNC news release can be found here:

http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/2629/1/

These news stories reference this article:
The, Natalie S., and Penny Gordon-Larsen. Entry Into Romantic Partnership Is Associated With Obesity. Obesity. Advance online publication 9 April, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/oby.2009.97

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