Food for Fat
I'm fatinated—whoops,
fascinated—by the new Harvard study showing that obesity can be spread through social networks.
Obesity appears to spread from one person to another like a virus or a fad, researchers reported yesterday in a first-of-its-kind study that helps explain -- and could help fight -- one of the nation's biggest public health problems...."It's almost a cliche to speak of the obesity epidemic as being an epidemic. But we wanted to see if it really did spread from person to person like a fashion or a germ," said Nicholas A. Christakis
of Harvard Medical School
, who led the study, being published tomorrow in the New England Journal of Medicine
. "And the answer is, 'Yes, it does.' We are finding evidence for a kind of social contagion."
Of course, this makes perfect common sense. If you hang out with fat people, you're likely to do what they do—eat more, exercise less, etc. Or at least, you're more likely to do that stuff than if you're hanging out with mountain bikers, yoga practitioners, and marathon runners.
There's some debate over whether this survey just proves the obvious. (Answer: Yes.) I also assume that fat people self-select and hang out with each other because they're less likely to feel social judgment about their weight. And, if they feel like eating a lot, then they'll have company likely to do the same, and that's just more fun than eating a lot around someone who's having a hot water with lemon.
The Washington Post concludes its article on the survey with this paragraph:
The researchers cautioned that people should not sever relationships with friends who have gained weight or stigmatize obese people, noting that close friendships have many positive health effects. But the results do support forming relationships with people who have healthful lifestyles.
Hmmm. Sounds to me like those two sentences come close to contradicting each other. If you spend more time hanging out with healthy people, aren't you likely to spend less time hanging out with fat people?