One or two alcoholic drinks a day may drop the risk of becoming obese, a U.S. study suggests.

Researchers found that among more than 8,200 U.S. adults, those who said they enjoyed a drink every day were 54 percent less likely than nondrinkers to be obese. Similarly, those who drank a little more (two drinks per day) or a little less (a few drinks per week) had a lower risk of obesity than teetotalers did.

"We were surprised to find that people who were moderate drinkers were less likely to be obese," said study co-author Dr. James Rohrer, from the department of family medicine at the Mayo Clinic.

"We don't want to give the wrong impression," Rohrer continued. "We certainly don't want to recommend that nondrinkers become drinkers just to try to control their weight."

In their study, Rohrer and his colleague, Ahmed Arif, from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, collected data on 8,236 nonsmokers who participated in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. These people had also answered questions about their drinking habits, and their body mass index was measured.

Because of the study's cross-sectional nature, no cause-and-effect relationship between alcohol and overweight or obesity could be established, the researchers said.

"Actively promoting moderate use of alcohol as a strategy to combat obesity would be inappropriate at this early stage of our understanding about the underlying mechanisms that link alcohol use with weight control," the study authors said.

Their report appears in the Dec. 4 online issue of BMC Public Health.

Editor: Donald