Do Your Friends Make You Fat?

A new study suggests that more emphasis on the spread of positive behaviors may help to solve the health risks of obesity.

Do your friends make you fat? A new study released this week from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) suggests this as a possibility for the fact that obesity has become an epidemic in the Western world over the last 30 years.

If your friends, siblings, spouse, parents, etc,. are obese, your chances of being obese are increased. For instance if your spouse gains weight, you have a 37% greater chance of doing so as well. If a friend becomes obese, your chances of doing so are increased by 57%. And if a sibling gains weight, you have a 40% chance of doing so also.

In regards to siblings and friends, where the pairs were of the same sex, the influence of gaining weight was stronger than if they were of the opposite sex.

The authors of the study suggest that the social network influence on obesity may stem from the fact that when one person gains weight, the friend, sibling or spouse finds social acceptance in doing so as well.

Although their data didn't offer statistical support, there is the suggestion that social networks may be able to harness this same force to reverse or slow the obesity. The fact that many derive support and success from social networks in giving up smoking or alcohol consumption, supports the fact that the same may be true for losing weight.

Source: The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years, by Nicholas A Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH and James H. Fowler, PhD, from data provided in the Framingham Heart Study. This was a study conducted from 1971 to 2003 of a social network of 12,067 densely interconnected people with three degrees of separation. Read more...