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New study says obesity can be contagious From the NY Daily News:
Overweight friends will lard it over you, study finds
BY JORDAN LITE DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Thursday, July 26th 2007, 4:00 AM Is gaining weight contagious? Yes, according to a surprising new study that says keeping company with the obese can make you fat, too. A person's likelihood of getting pudgy rises by 57% if he or she has a friend who's overweight. That risk triples among close friends, according to the findings reported in today's New England Journal of Medicine. The phenomenon can be seen even in people who are three degrees removed from each other, such as friends of friends of friends. And geographic distance doesn't diminish the risk. "The actions of people who are quite distant from you in a social network cascade and still affect you. It's a social contagion," said study author Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University. The risk of gaining weight rises by 40% if a sibling gets heavy and by 37% if a spouse becomes obese. The effect is stronger when friends and family are the same gender as you are, according to the study of 12,067 people over 32 years. While it could be that friends copy each other's behavior, it's more likely that being exposed to overweight people creates a new standard of acceptable body size, Christakis said. "This is an amazing finding," said Dr. Louis Aronne, director of the comprehensive weight control program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell. But he immediately saw cause for concern. "There's a danger that people will be biased against the overweight even more than in the past," Aronne said. "Is a mother going to say, 'I'm not going to let my kid play with an overweight kid because it's going to make my kid overweight'?" On the plus side, the person-to-person effect holds for fitness, too, Christakis found. "If your close friend loses weight, it has an effect on you," he said. http://www.nydailynews.co...r_you.html | |
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I thought this was a no-brainer anyway. If you're hanging out w/ people that go out to eat all the time, or what you do with them socially centers around food a lot, it's logical that you're all going to put on weight together. "I saw a woman with major Hammer pants on the subway a few weeks ago and totally thought of you." - sextonseven | |
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these studies crack me up-as somebody who has participated in scientific studies they are just a way to sit on your arse-imagine"we want you to do a study on fat ass people and see if there mates get fat....."
you get paid your hourly rate and stretch out your"qualaitive/quantitive data"for a year..... and at the end of the day you hand ina 50000 word thesis which could be summed in one sentance-yes fat people attract other fatties the world ignores it and you go back to work with research on your cv | |
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jonylawson said: these studies crack me up-as somebody who has participated in scientific studies they are just a way to sit on your arse-imagine"we want you to do a study on fat ass people and see if there mates get fat....."
you get paid your hourly rate and stretch out your"qualaitive/quantitive data"for a year..... and at the end of the day you hand ina 50000 word thesis which could be summed in one sentance-yes fat people attract other fatties the world ignores it and you go back to work with research on your cv lol. that is so true. the most cunning ones are the ones that gather all the data other people have already published, pretend to read it all and after about a year go "it's all rubbish, they're all wrong" the exact thing was done recently with someone claiming tomato's have no health benefits at all, contrary to a gazillion previous reports. the report was in fact based on all those other reports the sad thing is you just know someone is gonna study this report now and in about 8 months we'll have another contradictory thesis and true love lives on lollipops and crisps | |
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Odd, how this doesn't work the other way. Does hanging out with skinny people make one skinny? | |
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Obesity is contagious: you can easily catch it from doughnuts and burgers. I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at the dirt. | |
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All my friends are skinny.
I wish I would catch this skinny virus from them. Oh wait, nevermind. All I have to do is work out and stop eating junk. | |
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Love is contagious when it's alright. There's Joy In Expatriation. | |
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rushing07 said: Obesity is contagious: you can easily catch it from doughnuts and burgers.
(Insert something clever here) | |
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You can easily catch it around 2am in any bar. | |
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live4lust said: You can easily catch it around 2am in any bar.
Awww... | |
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my sister is getting heavier and heavier, although genetically our family is not predisposed to it | |
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Oh dear...a few of my coworkers are VERY overweight | |
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Ex-Moderator | Perhaps they should round up all us fat people and quarantine us on an island somewhere. You know, if they give us ice cream and chocolates, I'm totally in. |
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CarrieMpls said: Perhaps they should round up all us fat people and quarantine us on an island somewhere. You know, if they give us ice cream and chocolates, I'm totally in.
They'd better not get too close...fatness is contagious, you know. | |
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minneapolisgenius said: I thought this was a no-brainer anyway. If you're hanging out w/ people that go out to eat all the time, or what you do with them socially centers around food a lot, it's logical that you're all going to put on weight together.
Yup. but they had to come up with a study, and spend lots of money that could've gone to less important things, like finding cures and such | |
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ArielB said: minneapolisgenius said: I thought this was a no-brainer anyway. If you're hanging out w/ people that go out to eat all the time, or what you do with them socially centers around food a lot, it's logical that you're all going to put on weight together.
Yup. but they had to come up with a study, and spend lots of money that could've gone to less important things, like finding cures and such I've always wanted to be one of these elusive "experts" that actually does all these studies. "I saw a woman with major Hammer pants on the subway a few weeks ago and totally thought of you." - sextonseven | |
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CarrieMpls said: Perhaps they should round up all us fat people and quarantine us on an island somewhere. You know, if they give us ice cream and chocolates, I'm totally in.
But no cigarettes, 'cos that will keep you thin and then you'll get kicked off the island. | |
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Ex-Moderator | sextonseven said: CarrieMpls said: Perhaps they should round up all us fat people and quarantine us on an island somewhere. You know, if they give us ice cream and chocolates, I'm totally in.
But no cigarettes, 'cos that will keep you thin and then you'll get kicked off the island. You just ruined a good fantasy I had going there. |
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CarrieMpls said: sextonseven said: But no cigarettes, 'cos that will keep you thin and then you'll get kicked off the island. You just ruined a good fantasy I had going there. Sorry, you can't be a svelte smoker and live on fat island. You must choose one or the other. | |
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Ex-Moderator | sextonseven said: CarrieMpls said: You just ruined a good fantasy I had going there. Sorry, you can't be a svelte smoker and live on fat island. You must choose one or the other. |
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