NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new UK study provides additional evidence that heavy people are more likely to choose other overweight individuals as mates.

This phenomenon is known as "assortative mating" - when men and women tend to select partners according to nonrandom attributes such as height, religion, age and smoking habits.

Researchers have suggested that assortative mating by obesity could increase the already high prevalence of obesity by helping to pass on genes promoting excess weight to the next generation.

To date, all studies investigating assortative mating for obesity have used body mass index or skin fold thickness to measure obesity, and many have not accounted for other potential contributing factors, Dr. John R. Speakman of the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland and colleagues note.

Rowett and his team used a technique called dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) to get a more precise picture of levels of body fat in their study participants, which included 42 couples. They used statistical techniques to measure and account for the effects of age, the postal code area where people had grown up, and the amount of time they had been in a relationship.