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This story is from July 27, 2007
Are your friends making you fat?
Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus, researchers are reporting today.
Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus, researchers are reporting today.
When one person gains weight, close friends tend to gain weight, too.
The investigators knew who was friends with whom as well as who was a spouse or sibling or neighbour, and they knew how much each person weighed at various times over three decades. That let them reconstruct what happened over the years as individuals became obese.
Did their friends also become obese? Did family members? Or neighbours?
The answer, the researchers report, was that people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased a person’s chances of becoming obese by 57 per cent.
It did not even matter if the friend was hundreds of miles away, the influence remained. And the greatest influence of all was between close mutual friends. There, if one became obese, the other had a 171 percent increased chance of becoming obese, too.
Dr Nicholas A Christakis, a physician and professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School and a principal investigator in the new study, said one explanation was that friends affected each others’ perception of fatness.
When a close friend becomes obese, obesity may not look so bad. Science has shown that individuals have genetically determined ranges of weights, spanning perhaps 30 or so pounds for each person.
But that leaves a large role for the environment in determining whether a person’s weight is near the top of his or her range or near the bottom. As people have gotten fatter, it appears that many are edging toward the top of their ranges.
The question has been why. If the new research is correct, it may say that something in the environment seeded what some call an obesity epidemic, making a few people gain weight. Then social networks let the obesity spread rapidly.
When one person gains weight, close friends tend to gain weight, too.
The investigators knew who was friends with whom as well as who was a spouse or sibling or neighbour, and they knew how much each person weighed at various times over three decades. That let them reconstruct what happened over the years as individuals became obese.
The answer, the researchers report, was that people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased a person’s chances of becoming obese by 57 per cent.
There was no effect when a neighbour gained or lost weight, however, and family members had less influence than friends.
It did not even matter if the friend was hundreds of miles away, the influence remained. And the greatest influence of all was between close mutual friends. There, if one became obese, the other had a 171 percent increased chance of becoming obese, too.
Dr Nicholas A Christakis, a physician and professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School and a principal investigator in the new study, said one explanation was that friends affected each others’ perception of fatness.
When a close friend becomes obese, obesity may not look so bad. Science has shown that individuals have genetically determined ranges of weights, spanning perhaps 30 or so pounds for each person.
But that leaves a large role for the environment in determining whether a person’s weight is near the top of his or her range or near the bottom. As people have gotten fatter, it appears that many are edging toward the top of their ranges.
The question has been why. If the new research is correct, it may say that something in the environment seeded what some call an obesity epidemic, making a few people gain weight. Then social networks let the obesity spread rapidly.
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