Study: Your Friends Are Making You Fat

Study: Your Friends Are Making You Fat
Written by Jason Kobely, Internet News Producer


UNDATED (AP) - A new study suggests getting fat is a social affair. Researchers at UC San Diego sifted through more than 50-years worth of medical records of an entire Boston suburb, some 12,000 people.

They found loved ones -- even ones who live hundreds of miles away -- play a surprisingly strong role in the growth of a person's waist line. The study suggests obesity is a "socially contagious" disease that can spread from person to person and that social pull appears to be even stronger than genetics.

The study says a person's chances of becoming obese increase nearly 60 percent if a friend has. Researchers say there's more at play than similar health habits. They also believe having relatives and friends who become obese changes one's idea of what is an acceptable weight.

If your friends and family get fat, chances are you will too, researchers report in a startling new study that suggests obesity is "socially contagious" and can spread easily from person to person.

http://www.news10.net/display_story.aspx?storyid=30748

I can do it all by myself

And have

....family I can understand perfectly...genes and habits....but friends...not at all.

eating, like smoking, is a very social activity, or at least can be.

I think in addition to the "acceptable weight" mentioned in the post, there is also the idea that friends will eat together often, and likely at restaurants where portion size and ingredients are harder to control.

Also, as someone who has been both skinny and fat and is now in the middle somewhere, I have had people - often the same people - nag me about what I eat, when I eat, how much I eat, etc. While growing up, I have also had heavy relatives offer me a lot of food, which makes it harder to be sensible.

I think there's some truth to this idea on several levels.

Your friends can also make you lean based on their lifestyles and eating habits. I give it a degree of credence. My wife is a 55 year old gym rat who is a health freak. Larger women where she works gravitate towards her and she has helped some of them just by being herself and inviting them along on her routines.

:P

be tortured and marginalized. Nice.

It is amazing how such stories get so much coverage.....

The media reports on this study are grossly misleading; practically garbage. Google the source article for the facts:


New England Journal of Medicine-this week's edition online.

The sex of the ego and alter also appeared to be important. When the sample was restricted to same-sex friendships (87% of the total), the probability of obesity in an ego increased by 71% (95% CI, 13 to 145) if the alter became obese. For friends of the opposite sex, however, there was no significant association (P=0.64). Among friends of the same sex, a man had a 100% (95% CI, 26 to 197) increase in the chance of becoming obese if his male friend became obese, whereas the female-to-female spread of obesity was not significant (38% increased chance; 95% CI, –39 to 161).