Women may listen more to the cooings of Nigella Lawson than Jamie Oliver's call to get healthier, according to experts.

Women in the 21 to 40 year bracket are eating themselves into an early grave, while men seem to be trying to lose weight and eat healthier, says Professor Klim McPherson of Oxford University, a problem that may be attributable to a general acceptance of the fuller figured woman.

Celebrity cook Nigella Lawson has been called a domestic goddess. Known for her curvaceous frame and indulgent cooking with full fat ingredients, Lawson has said that she could never deprive herself of food. In recent years, she has been criticised for her weight gain but even so, a spate of fuller-figured celebrities such as singer Adele and Mad Men star Christina Hendricks have helped create more tolerance for a curvier female shape.

Jamie Oliver's own campaigning for a better and healthier nation has taken the form of the Ministry of Food in which he encourages readers to prepare healthy alternatives to convenience food. "I hope it will be especially useful in places that are facing health problems similar to the obesity epidemic we have here in the UK," he writes on his website.

A study conducted by McPherson in 2007 predicted that at least half of the British population would be obese by the year 2050 but due to a slowing in the rate of obesity, McPherson took another look at figures in 2008 and found that obesity in men stayed relatively stable with 20 percent in 2000 and a slight drop of 19 percent in 2008, whereas obesity in women had leapt from 16 percent to 21 percent in the same period.

Though this is an alarming figure, the Daily Mail notes that the rise is still less than McPherson had anticipated.  "Obesity is levelling off at a very high level still," McPherson said. He also warned that obese people could expect a reduced lifespan by about four to five years.

Tam Fry, National Obesity Forum in the UK said that nurses had told him that men tend to be more motivated to lose weight and to stick to their diet. He noted that men didn't have as much pressure to be thin as women do, but that as the pressure to fit into a smaller dress size eases off, women are less likely to try reduce their weight.