America’s ever-expanding waistlines may eventually render mittens obsolete, a new study suggests. Researchers for the NIH found that overweight people generate more heat than their lean peers, but don’t retain it any better. Instead, the heat exits from the hands and feet—so an overweight person’s extremities are, on average, hotter than those of a normal-weight person.
"If that's the case, people could go without gloves and just stick their hands in their pockets," an executive director with the International Glove Association tells the Toronto Star. "You could use your hands like thermometers." (More glove stories.)