Careful there! I am not advising you to get rid of your fat friends, but rather to tell your friends to get rid of their fat (the difference a comma makes!)

Why, you ask? Because a new study shows that obesity can spread through your close circle of friends and family. And when you think about it, this is only but natural. Remember: our idea of what is acceptable is all about perception and when the view around us changes, so does our idea about certain things like body weight and appearance.

A spouse becoming obese increased the probability of the other following suit by about 37%. A brother’s probability was studied to be about 40% if his sibling became obese. But the biggest surprise was between unrelated (but close) people:

The risk climbed even more sharply among friends — between 57 and 171 percent, depending on whether they considered each other mutual friends. Moreover, friends affected friends’ risk even when they lived far apart, and the influence cascaded through three degrees of separation before petering out, the researchers found.

- Obesity Spreads In Social Circles As Trends Do, Study Indicates

This and numerous other articles and TV news segments all over the broadcasting world are all based on a study published in the New England Journal Of Medicine, of nearly 12000 people from the Framingham area of Massachusetts, over a period of almost 32 years. I can’t recall a more detailed study than this, but like some other media outlets are reporting, the results are not too surprising. Some of these results were always known by simple observation: The spousal connection, obese families having obese children have all been seen in numerous cases - all we have now is concrete percentage numbers.

Still, the study is important in that it shows us that sometimes extraneous factors other than diet and exercise can play big, sub-conscious roles. When “What’s for dinner?” is answered by “Pizza!” and wild cheers from the children, there isn’t much one or the other spouse can do. Even if one feels in one’s mind that pizza may not be the best way to end the day, he/she just “goes with the flow” and there you have it folks: the slippery slide!

“What spreads is an idea. As people around you gain weight, your attitudes about what constitutes an acceptable body size changes, and you might follow suit and emulate that body size. It may cross some kind of threshold, and you can see an epidemic take off. Once it starts, it’s hard to stop it. It can spread like wildfire.”

If there is one good thing about this study it is this: the results work both ways! I mean that health-conscious friends/spouses seemed to have a good effect on their respective counterparts. While choosing a partner cannot be based on their eating habits (which can change, anyway), knowing the extent of one’s influence on the other is important, as this study shows!

Study: The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years

Technorati Tags: health, nutrition, fitness, obesity, social-network

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