Obesity is Contagious
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For the click impaired like me 
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Obesity Is Contagious, Study Finds
By LAURA BLUE
Wondering why your waistline is expanding? Have a look at those of your friends. Your close friends can influence your weight even more than genes or your family members, according to new research appearing in the July 26 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. The study's authors suggest that obesity isn't just spreading; rather, it may be contagious between people, like a common cold.
Researchers from Harvard and the University of California, San Diego, reviewed a database of 12,067 densely interconnected people — that is, a group that included many families and friends — who had all participated in a major American heart study between 1971 and 2003. The participants met with heart researchers every two to four years. To facilitate study follow-up, the researchers asked participants to name family members and at least one friend who could be called on if the participant changed addresses. It was that information the NEJM authors mined to explore obesity in the context of a social network.
According to their analysis, when a study participant's friend became obese, that first participant had a 57% greater chance of becoming obese himself. In pairs of people in which each identified the other as a close friend, when one person became obese the other had a 171% greater chance of following suit. "You are what you eat isn't the end of the story," says study co-author James Fowler, a political scientist at UC San Diego. "You are what you and your friends eat."
It's not just that people who share similar lifestyles become friends, Fowler says. He and co-author Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School considered the possibility — and were surprised. For one thing, geographic distance between friends in the study seemed to have no impact: friends who lived a 5-hour drive apart and saw each other infrequently were just as influenced by each other's weight gains as those who lived close enough to share weekly take-out meals or pick-up basketball games. The best proof that friendship caused the weight gain, says Fowler, is that people were much more likely to pattern their own behavior on the actions of people they considered friends — but the relationship didn't work in the other direction. If you had named another person as a friend, and your friend became obese, than you were more than 50% more likely to get fat too. But if your friend had not named you as a mutual friend, and you became obese, it would have no significant impact on your friend's weight.
The obvious question is, Why? Spouses share meals and a backyard, but the researchers found a much smaller risk of gaining weight — a 37% increase — when one spouse became obese. Siblings share genes, but their influence, too, was much smaller, increasing each other's risk 40%. Fowler believes the effect has much more to do with social norms: whom we look to when considering appropriate social behavior. Having fat friends makes being fat seem more acceptable. "Your spouse may not be the person you look to when you're deciding what kind of body image is appropriate, how much to eat or how much to exercise," Fowler says. Nor do we necessarily compare ourselves to our siblings. "We get to choose our friends," says. "We don't get to choose our families."
Fowler and Christakis say that the contagion effect should hold just as much for weight loss as it does for weight gain. "I would hope this influences individuals to get friends and families involved in decisions about health," Fowler says. After all, he says, a weight-loss plan may be more effective if the people closest to you are on board. And, if you're successful, your good health will help others achieve a healthy weight too. The impact extends not just to your friends, it turns out — but also to your friends' friends, and even to their friends. Fowler and Christakis found that the ripple effect of a weight gain was significant to three degrees of separation.
For policy analysts, then, the lesson is that public-health interventions may well be far more cost-effective than previously acknowledged. Helping one person lose weight can have a snowball effect through an entire social network, affecting social norms among the target person's friends and acquaintances. "There's been a lot of talk about limiting portion size, getting rid of vending machines in schools," says Thomas Sander, a civic-engagement specialist at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, not involved in the research. Those interventions may be useful, he says. "This study suggests that if we're fighting obesity without taking into account the social aspect, we're going to be acting with our hands behind our backs." Most people recognize that smoking behavior and drinking behavior are influenced by group standards. But such thinking is relatively new for obesity, still so often thought of as an individual's moral failing or clinical condition. Next up for Fowler and Christakis's consideration: how a social network can influence an individual event — like a heart attack. "There are all kinds of processes," says Fowler, "and we'd like to know whether they spread like this."
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Obesity Is Contagious, Study Finds
By LAURA BLUE
Wondering why your waistline is expanding? Have a look at those of your friends. Your close friends can influence your weight even more than genes or your family members, according to new research appearing in the July 26 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. The study's authors suggest that obesity isn't just spreading; rather, it may be contagious between people, like a common cold.
Researchers from Harvard and the University of California, San Diego, reviewed a database of 12,067 densely interconnected people — that is, a group that included many families and friends — who had all participated in a major American heart study between 1971 and 2003. The participants met with heart researchers every two to four years. To facilitate study follow-up, the researchers asked participants to name family members and at least one friend who could be called on if the participant changed addresses. It was that information the NEJM authors mined to explore obesity in the context of a social network.
According to their analysis, when a study participant's friend became obese, that first participant had a 57% greater chance of becoming obese himself. In pairs of people in which each identified the other as a close friend, when one person became obese the other had a 171% greater chance of following suit. "You are what you eat isn't the end of the story," says study co-author James Fowler, a political scientist at UC San Diego. "You are what you and your friends eat."
It's not just that people who share similar lifestyles become friends, Fowler says. He and co-author Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School considered the possibility — and were surprised. For one thing, geographic distance between friends in the study seemed to have no impact: friends who lived a 5-hour drive apart and saw each other infrequently were just as influenced by each other's weight gains as those who lived close enough to share weekly take-out meals or pick-up basketball games. The best proof that friendship caused the weight gain, says Fowler, is that people were much more likely to pattern their own behavior on the actions of people they considered friends — but the relationship didn't work in the other direction. If you had named another person as a friend, and your friend became obese, than you were more than 50% more likely to get fat too. But if your friend had not named you as a mutual friend, and you became obese, it would have no significant impact on your friend's weight.
The obvious question is, Why? Spouses share meals and a backyard, but the researchers found a much smaller risk of gaining weight — a 37% increase — when one spouse became obese. Siblings share genes, but their influence, too, was much smaller, increasing each other's risk 40%. Fowler believes the effect has much more to do with social norms: whom we look to when considering appropriate social behavior. Having fat friends makes being fat seem more acceptable. "Your spouse may not be the person you look to when you're deciding what kind of body image is appropriate, how much to eat or how much to exercise," Fowler says. Nor do we necessarily compare ourselves to our siblings. "We get to choose our friends," says. "We don't get to choose our families."
Fowler and Christakis say that the contagion effect should hold just as much for weight loss as it does for weight gain. "I would hope this influences individuals to get friends and families involved in decisions about health," Fowler says. After all, he says, a weight-loss plan may be more effective if the people closest to you are on board. And, if you're successful, your good health will help others achieve a healthy weight too. The impact extends not just to your friends, it turns out — but also to your friends' friends, and even to their friends. Fowler and Christakis found that the ripple effect of a weight gain was significant to three degrees of separation.
For policy analysts, then, the lesson is that public-health interventions may well be far more cost-effective than previously acknowledged. Helping one person lose weight can have a snowball effect through an entire social network, affecting social norms among the target person's friends and acquaintances. "There's been a lot of talk about limiting portion size, getting rid of vending machines in schools," says Thomas Sander, a civic-engagement specialist at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, not involved in the research. Those interventions may be useful, he says. "This study suggests that if we're fighting obesity without taking into account the social aspect, we're going to be acting with our hands behind our backs." Most people recognize that smoking behavior and drinking behavior are influenced by group standards. But such thinking is relatively new for obesity, still so often thought of as an individual's moral failing or clinical condition. Next up for Fowler and Christakis's consideration: how a social network can influence an individual event — like a heart attack. "There are all kinds of processes," says Fowler, "and we'd like to know whether they spread like this."
pennybear09
New member
Time has been featuring health and obesity lately it seems. I know earlier this week they published an article on how obese children are less likely to go to college.
that one guy
Banned
Jesus, another BS copout for being overweight. Take some personal respondsbility for godsake. This article isn't really news, its common sense. If all of your friends are fat, then obviously you'll feel more comfortable gaining weight.
pennybear09
New member
My teacher passed this article around in class today. Then most of the class stared at me and the one other heavy girl in the class like they were gonna catch it... it was a very uncomfortable moment
Oh wow...I can't imagine. I would have gone around coughing on people.
Maybe it's just me, but their articles have a very negative tone when it comes to obesity rather than being objective like they should be as a journlism magazine. I read the one about college the day before and then this one and was like "Great, this makes total sense. First post an article about how obese kids aren't going to college because they are too busy taking drugs and committing suicide and then make it so no one wants to be their friend. Way to go Time."
My teacher passed this article around in class today. Then most of the class stared at me and the one other heavy girl in the class like they were gonna catch it... it was a very uncomfortable moment
Sorry about the click thing
That is really too bad. What was the teacher's point exactly?
I can see how this could be helpful knowledge generally for our society, but not really for a child or teenager who can seemingly only act on it by not being around obese children (or feeling embarrassed if you are one who is obese).My teacher passed this article around in class today. Then most of the class stared at me and the one other heavy girl in the class like they were gonna catch it... it was a very uncomfortable moment
What was th class it was passed around in? Is it a health type class? Journalism? What was the teacher's point?
lindseybot3k
New member
Just fucking great, now nobody's going to fucking want to be around me.
I think that this is total bullshit.
Just because you know someone who's fat doesn't mean that you're going to become fat.
I think that this is total bullshit.
Just because you know someone who's fat doesn't mean that you're going to become fat.
brunettegoddess
New member
Not to sound trite, but this is the exact conversation I had with my boyfriend a few months ago. Those around you that you are close to or see on a daily basis, whatever the "physical" majority is, it is likely that your weight can be affected. It's not always the case, but I can say that I am someone affected by these things. The first three years of college, my closest friends were 125 and 155 and all of the girls that lived in the rooms around mine in the dorm were all sorority skinny girls. Seeing "thin" everyday and seeing all those thin girls going to the gym at least twice was a huge visual for me and kept me in check. During my senior year of college, the two girls I spent the most time with were both over 250 and in one semester I packed on 25lbs because these girls never went to the gym and ate what they wanted... and ate and ate and ate. As soon as I left college and I was separated from my friends due to distance and then started dating my 140lb boyfriend, I lost all 25lbs plus just a smidge extra. Even now I live with two boys who both weigh less and it's a big mental reminder of how I can't eat my weight in food. So while you can't get it from kissing, we live in a visually impressionable society and that's the way in which it is "contagious".
OHMYGOD808
New member
I buy this article, big time. Dining out is (or at least, it WAS before my lifestyle change) a big part of my social routine. And my college friends and I all got fat together (me more so than them, however).
But hey, at least I know better now. I just got back from vacationing in Italy and I LOST weight there!!! It's all about making smart choices when ordering!
But hey, at least I know better now. I just got back from vacationing in Italy and I LOST weight there!!! It's all about making smart choices when ordering!
Cannon 2006
New member
Since physical location makes no difference, can we close this forum as our obese forum friends are obviously making us obese too. This study is one small study that refutes hundreds of other studies so naturally, which one does the press pick up on. You can believe this is going to have a great impact on the lives of obese children who already have a hard time being accepted. I have a theory on what is behind the change they saw--I believe that people who have obese family members have an easier time accepting obese people as friends. Therefore, they have a genetic predisposition towards obesity themselves. I'd really need to get further into the study to really look at the why and wherefore. I do know from what I heard on the news that this study definitively claims that the opposite is not true and says if an obese person loses weight, their friends will not be inspired to do the same.
It's actually an interesting, thought provoking analysis, conducted over 32 years as an outgrowth of the Farmington Heart Study, and nowhere in the study itself is the word "contagious" used...that's a term initially used in an article about the study...which the the mainstream media picked up and ran with because it's catchy and attention grabbing.
The study:
Primarily the study itself looks at the influence of group dynamics on behaviors and attitudes that may be contributing to the increase in obesity. Unlike what may have been twisted to make better copy in the press, one of the conclusions of the study is that weight loss support networks, (like this forum itself) may actually be a valuable tool against obesity:
"... Yet the relevance of social influence also suggests that it may be possible to harness this same force to slow the spread of obesity. Network phenomena might be exploited to spread positive health behaviors,34,35,36 in part because people's perceptions of their own risk of illness may depend on the people around them.37 Smoking- and alcohol-cessation programs and weight-loss interventions that provide peer support — that is, that modify the person's social network — are more successful than those that do not.34,35,38,39 People are connected, and so their health is connected.40,41 Consequently, medical and public health interventions might be more cost-effective than initially supposed, since health improvements in one person might spread to others.42 The observation that people are embedded in social networks suggests that both bad and good behaviors might spread over a range of social ties. This highlights the necessity of approaching obesity not only as a clinical problem but also as a public health problem."
For me the take away message is simply a reminder that we do, as socially connected human beings, take our cues as to what is, and is not, socially acceptable behavior, from those around us. It makes sense that this influence can include (sometimes without our being aware of it) our choices of when/where/why//what/how much we eat and or exercise. The influence can be positive or negative...just look around this forum and see how many times people post something like "I decided to try (fill in the blank) because I see so many people here doing it"...It's just another thing to be aware of as we make our individual daily choices.
The study:
Primarily the study itself looks at the influence of group dynamics on behaviors and attitudes that may be contributing to the increase in obesity. Unlike what may have been twisted to make better copy in the press, one of the conclusions of the study is that weight loss support networks, (like this forum itself) may actually be a valuable tool against obesity:
"... Yet the relevance of social influence also suggests that it may be possible to harness this same force to slow the spread of obesity. Network phenomena might be exploited to spread positive health behaviors,34,35,36 in part because people's perceptions of their own risk of illness may depend on the people around them.37 Smoking- and alcohol-cessation programs and weight-loss interventions that provide peer support — that is, that modify the person's social network — are more successful than those that do not.34,35,38,39 People are connected, and so their health is connected.40,41 Consequently, medical and public health interventions might be more cost-effective than initially supposed, since health improvements in one person might spread to others.42 The observation that people are embedded in social networks suggests that both bad and good behaviors might spread over a range of social ties. This highlights the necessity of approaching obesity not only as a clinical problem but also as a public health problem."
For me the take away message is simply a reminder that we do, as socially connected human beings, take our cues as to what is, and is not, socially acceptable behavior, from those around us. It makes sense that this influence can include (sometimes without our being aware of it) our choices of when/where/why//what/how much we eat and or exercise. The influence can be positive or negative...just look around this forum and see how many times people post something like "I decided to try (fill in the blank) because I see so many people here doing it"...It's just another thing to be aware of as we make our individual daily choices.
DCarr10760
New member
Hi Cym!
That's very well said (and exactly my take on the whole thing too).
This whole thing sounds to me like an obvious observation of social interaction quantified, reported scientifically, misinterpreted and sensationalized by the media.
David C
That's very well said (and exactly my take on the whole thing too).
This whole thing sounds to me like an obvious observation of social interaction quantified, reported scientifically, misinterpreted and sensationalized by the media.
David C