Ice-packs have been known to bring down inflammation and prevent swelling in sports injuries, but now scientists have shown they could also help people lose weight.

Simply strapping an ice-pack to a fatty area like the thighs or stomach for just 30 minutes can burn away hard-to-shift calories.

The cold compress works by triggering the body into turning flabby white fat into calorie burning ‘beige’ fat.

Humans have two types of fat tissue. White fat is the type of fat we associate with chubby stomachs and hips and which circulates in the blood to fuel muscle.

Alternatively, brown fat is used by the body to generate heat. The colder you become, the more brown fat disappears.

Now scientists have discovered that when white fat gets very cold it can turn into a kind of brown fat, which researchers have dubbed ‘beige’

And beige fat can burn away to generate heat.

"We wanted to investigate whether human adults had the ability to transform some white fat deposits into beige fat when they were exposed to cold," said Dr Philip Kern, one of the study authors from the University of Kentucky School of Medicine in Lexington, Kentucky.

"Browning fat tissue would be an excellent defence against obesity. It would result in the body burning extra calories rather than converting them into additional fat tissue."