SOCIALLY CONTAGIOUS OBESITY

If your friends and family are fat or get fat, odds are you will be also says the results of a federally funded study published in recently in the New England Journal of Medicine and funded by the National Institute on Aging. Oddly enough this appears to be true even if they live far away. In addition to poor eating and exercise habits, there is also the perception of what is an acceptable weight. Personally, I find this is also true when it comes to acceptable behavior.

Is the solution to obesity to get rid of your friends and family? Of course not! That would be the last thing that you would want to do because having more friends makes you healthier.

Some of the findings of the study were:

- When an obsese person gained weight, their friend also gained at least a portion of that amount of weight.

- Gender also played a role in that in the cases of same sex friendships, a person's obesity riskincreased by 71 percent if a friend gained weight. Between brothers, the risk was up by 44 percent and 67 percent between sisters.

Some other experts fault the study because of the small sample group and limited vicinity in which they lived. They tend to agree with my observation that people tend to go with the flow of the people around them.