LONDON (Reuter) - Don`t have that pre-dinner drink if you want to lose weight, Dutch researchers advised on Thursday - an aperitif does stimulate the appetite. People who have an alcoholic drink before sitting down to lunch or dinner eat more than those who have fruit juice or water, Dr Margriet Westerterp and colleagues at Maastricht University found. They told the Eighth European Congress on Obesity, being held in Dublin, that people who had a drink ate more quickly and consumed "significantly` more calories than those who did not. It did not matter whether they were overweight. "From this study we conclude that alcohol consumption from wine or beer had a stimulating effect on eating rate and on short-term energy intake," they said in a statement released in London ahead of the congress. "To obese people this observation suggests that they might be advised to avoid wine or beer as an aperitif, since these drinks were shown to stimulate food intake."

Giving up smoking does not have to mean extra pounds in the hips or gut, Swedish doctors said. They said they had successfully helped slimmers lose weight and kick the smoking habit at the same time. Dr Stephan Rossner and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm said a quarter of their volunteers managed to quit smoking and lose weight. They were working with 288 women who were of normal weight, ranging through to mild clinical obesity. One group got nicotine chewing gum and were given recommendations for a diet. The second group were given the gum - meant to help smokers quit - and were put on a special very low calorie diet of 420 calories a day off and on for six weeks out of the 16-week experimental period. After 16 weeks, half of the second group had stopped smoking and lost an average of 2.1 kg (nearly five pounds). Only 37 percent of the first group stopped smoking and they gained an average of 1.6 kg (3.5 pounds). Rossner told the Eighth European Congress on Obesity in Dublin: "We found not only good smoking cessation results but also that the weight increase, which previously led to a resumption of smoking, was changed to weight control. "This suggests that new strategies can be developed for this patient group."