Will Purell Help?
You may have already heard, but it turns out that obesity is “socially contagious.” That is to say, if we get ourselves a fat friend, we’re likely to gain weight ourselves.
“We were stunned to find that friends who are hundreds of miles away have just as much impact on a person’s weight status as friends who are right next door”… The study found a person’s chances of becoming obese went up 57 percent if a friend did, 40 percent if a sibling did and 37 percent if a spouse did. In the closest friendships, the risk almost tripled.
According to Nicholas Christakis, the Harvard Medical School doctor who ran the study:
“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.”
One psychologist theorized that the reverse may also be true:
If one person loses weight, others around him or her will want to lose weight, too. We have noticed this effect in our own Jenny Craig saga. When people you know see you losing weight, they definitely want to know how you’re doing it.
Kate Harding, of course, is on it.
It’s well worth mentioning that that study demonstrated, among other things, that there’s no clear link between longevity and BMI, that among non-smokers, obesity was correlated with greater longevity, and that the largest single determinant of longevity was… drumroll… genes.
So basically, they took a study that showed obesity’s no big deal and turned it into a study that shows obesity is CONTAGIOUS!!!
*headdesk*
That’s the most frightening bit of all, actually. The current message is “FAT! SCARY! RUN AWAY! OBESITY EPIDEMIC!” And any science that comes out relating to obesity is going to be given an attention-getting headline and be bent to serve that message.
Here’s yet another reaction to the study that I found interesting. She cites this New York Times article:
You don’t want to lose a friend who becomes obese, Dr. Christakis said. Friends are good for your overall health, he explains. So why not make friends with a thin person, he suggests, and let the thin person’s behavior influence you and your obese friend?
I can tell this issue is going to blow up over the next couple of days. If you see any interesting takes on it, please let us know in the comments.
Posted by mo pie
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FUCK THEM! I have skinny friends with food issues, should i let them influence me? Even if they starve themselfs? Cuz it’s soooo better to be anorexic them to be fat. Mybe i’m a better influence on them, cuz i eat what i want (food with a lot of vegetbles) and excersize. And i’m still fat!!!!!!
I’ve just finished my own study too. Its concluded that nowadays all you need to be a scientist is a course or two in creative writing and a very closed mind.
Seriously, when are these guys gonna give up? Aren’t there real diseases they need to be studying, or have we cured enough of everything that scientists don’t know what to do with themselves? Because last time I checked, cancer’s still pretty serious…
I’m with you Chesney. Since the current administration is all about flat-earthers, it stands to reason that much of the so-called science information we’re seeing is flat out bullsh*t.
Someone on another post commented that a great deal of the hand wringing about the obesity epidemic seems to come along whenever socialized medicine is discussed- so skinny people can rally about why they don’t want to have to cover fat people for being so “unhealthy.” Seems real to me, since the meme going around about “Sicko” is: Michael Moore=fat= why pay for him and others like him?
It’s almost heady, having this much power. Not only can people gain weight by befriending me, but I can influence weight by simply EXISTING IN THEIR GENERAL VICINITY — real or virtual.
So here’s the plan…fat people should all befriend thin people in the guise of “learing from them”. Then, we shall turn our powers upon them and TURN THEM ALL FAT!
Today the city, Tomorrow the world!
I’m fat and if that makes my friends fatter it is because they are JEALOUS!
This reminds me of an MTV show about a fat camp. This girl was on her way to fat camp to lose weight, and it showed her before, hanging out with her friends and explaining that they like to go out to eat a lot, celebrate every holiday with big meals, etc. Then she went to fat camp and started playing volleyball, waterskiing, eating healthy, and hitting the gym, and lost weight. They did a follow-up and while she had only gained a little weight back, she said she had stopped working out and playing sports because her friends didn’t like to do that, and that if she wanted to hang out with them, they were going to be eating.
I can understand that nobody wants to play volleyball or waterski by herself, or give up your friends because they like to eat, but to me she seemed awfully impressionable if she just stopped exercising because her friends didn’t want to do it with her. I exercise alone every time, you know?
I agree – fuck them and my fat contagion – but my first thought when I heard this is, “Has anyone thought about the fact that given our fat prejudiced society, overweight people may feel more comfortable befriending other overweight people? And same with skinny?” Meaning, we all know how while you adore your skinny friends, it’s difficult to watch them eat whatever they want/get all the attention from men/fit into any clothing item they could want. And like Mo has posted about, I too feel the instant sense of kinship when I meet a curvy girl.
I just heard a story about this study on NPR- of course, the lead-in was, in smarmy news-voice- “A new study shows fat is . . .contagious!!!” And there was a stupid anecdote about Krispy Kremes at the office being the root of all evil. But the story itself closed with comments from a researcher unconnected with the study who said that fat people are stigmatized enough- don’t add this on top. (Yay?)
I think it’s the obesity epidemic spin on this that is ridiculous- they make it sound like “we’ve found the vector for this horrible disease!!!” All the terms they use are really loaded, and the story assumes that however thin people live must be right, and however fat people live must be wrong. They seem to be taking the same stance as MeMe!!!: “Normalizing Obesity is the problem!”
We could write a totally different story from the same facts by just changing the terms- like medii says, we could say that the people with thin friends stay self-hating and disordered, while the people with fat friends become comfortable and self-accepting. Neither story comes directly from the study’s results or talks about the participants’ actual emotional and physical health!
As social animals, we learn a lot about normalcy by from the group of people we’re around, both consciously and unconsciously- for example, women who spend a lot of time together often find that their menstrual cycles align. But social circles are not our only source for ideas about normal eating- the food industry has a huge stake in manipulating our notions of what normal portions and normal meals are like- and they’re not doing it for our health. No previous generation of Americans has let manufacturers influence their eating so much. I’m thinking not just about restaurant portions, but about how processed foods get labeled as “healthy” in the grocery store, and the way food industry lobbying groups affect public policy and advertise about nutrition.
I know most of the readers here eat more mindfully, but it bears thinking about how this industry is trying hard to affect all shoppers’ notions about how to eat.
It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block. —
Paul Gauguin
You’re either too fat or too thin. You just can’t win.
Natalie Imbruglia
We feel it’s unacceptable to be fat, when it has nothing to do with who the person actually is.
Gwyneth Paltrow
When I was larger, people said I was fat. Now that I’ve lost weight, they say I died.
Luther Vandross
It’s strange but true. Fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing.
My initial reaction to this, after laughing at the pearl-clutching alarmist tone of FAT CONTAGION AAIIEEEE!!!…was to think, hold up: maybe I am actually quite slim, and I have just *caught someone else’s fat!* Damn it to hell!
This just in: the scientific community’s ability to string one or two factoids together in a row and extrapolate whatever they damn well please from it: also epidemic!
I took a look at Kate Harding’s, and read Kim’s thoughts above as well. The fact that even having a friend who is fat on the other side of the country whom you talk to on the phone upping your own risk of being fat just screams “bad science” to me.
I do research in grad school, and one goal is to make theoretical claims about results without overreaching or making extreme claims. Looks like either the researchers themselves or the media managed to forget that.
I wanted to share some comments from friend that I shared this article with via e-mail
“SO…….. MAYBE, a, well, let’s say a “terrorist” knew about this. It could be that they came to America and got fat, and then the people around them got fat and next thing you know, we’re all fat. So really its NOT our fault we’re fat, it’s a terrorist plot.”
“The answer, dummy researchers, is that we usually become close friends with
people with whom we share interests and a little thing called lifestyle.
Additionally, more and more people are living a technological and less
physical lifestyle. So, bozos, there’s your answer for why, most likely,
people of a physical type might tend to flock together.
Or, maybe you’re right!! Oooh no, America — run for the hills! The
fatties are coming!!! They may infect your children, your husband, your
wife!! AIIEEEEEEEEEE!
Stupid bastards.”
If you want to read my response to this, you can click on my name and it should go to my blog. Basically, though, I said that if my influence of helping people to become happy with who they are, the way they are, then what a lovely effect. I just want people to love their bodies and know that they are not their dress size.
CNN talked about this bullshit this morning and guess what they said? That there are two theories behind this.
1) Fat people hang out with other fat people and think that since everyone around them looks like them, they don’t need to lose weight.
2) People in general hang with people with similar interests. The person talking about this contagious fat “problem” said that she has a friend who loves tennis, so they play tennis a lot. And then she went on to say that basically, fat people like to eat, so when a bunch of fat people get together, they get together and EAT. (I wish I was fucking kidding you.) And that fat people aren’t going to want to go out to eat with their skinny friends because they think their skinny friends are judging their food choices.
I shit you not. CNN made me so angry this morning that I was shaking. I was outraged. I plan on letting them know this, too. This woman went on to say that slim people are fit, implying that fat people AREN’T and it is just. so. fucking. infuriating.
Fat as a terrorist plot–bwah!
Actually, this is not *my* ass; I’m smuggling it for someone else. Because I hate freedom.
i’m fat. none of my friends are. some of them have been my close friends for over a decade. how long does it take that fat contagion to kick in, anyway? i’ll have to ask my friends on our next hike… Fck CNN.
Fuck CNN because they don’t even practice good journalism anymore and fuck my fat being contagious! If that was the case then I should be as skinny as a toothpick because most of my friends growing up were slender little things. What a load of tosh.
I kind of want to punch whoever wrote this headline.
Oh, that’s just friggin’ great. On top of everything else, now I’ve got a social disease.
A social disease? Then take him to a social worker!
(sorry, but I can never resist a West Side Story quote!)
I think there are too many variables here to be so cut-and-dry. How susceptible is someone to peer pressure, for example? What kinds of eating habits have they already developed? Are they prone to emotional eating? The list goes on.
What I love best about this article on CNN (and I know they’re not the only news outlet carrying it) is that they just added a new couple of “we losta ton of weight” role models to their Obesity Crisis Central websiste. The husband part of the duo lost about 250 lbs in FIFTEEN MONTHS (without WLS). The wife, who lost something like 300 lbs, says she doesn’t really exercise other than take a walk when she feels like it.
On the same page, they link to a Mayo Clinic website that talks about slow weight loss being the best for you, and if I remember correctly, a link that talks about how you’ve got to combine exercise with better eating to get healthier.
It’s just so funny and sad. They’re holding up this couple who lost weight in a really questionable way as role models, when the advice from doctors says “No, this is really NOT the way to do it.” Just shows what the real message is: Thin is always better than fat, whatever it takes to get you there.
Anyone want to take any bets on how fast they’ll gain that weight back?
The New York Times headline made me so angry. I wrote about the whole ridiculous notion over at my place:
http://www.peacebang.com/2007/07/27/fat-is-catching-say-very-smart-science-type-people/
My general take on it is that as a Fat American, I’m worried about the Stupidity Epidemic in this country, and also about the Materialism Epidemic.
The serious implication here, though, is that some misguided folks will now be evaluating their friendships on the basis of body size, and that’s sickening. The research actually says that slim people have a more healthy influence on one than a fat person.
Stop the madness!
I find the article interesting, mostly because it’s a great find for anyone who wants to teach students how to ask questions about research studies. So they followed 12,067 people from 1971-2002. The original point of the study was to follow cardiovascular health. I just wonder a few things: 1) How many people have friendships that last 30 years? (Lovely if you do, but really… how long was the friendship influence REALLY tracked?) 2) How many people in the study had long-distance friends also in the study? Are we talking about just a tiny percentage of that original group when we make much of the “proximity doesn’t matter thing”? And if we don’t have visual proximity to our fat friends, how are we recalibrating our notions of “normal” weight? What was the overall weight gain for the whole U.S. population over those 3 decades? Are there other ways we can explain the fat / thin distribution (and we know people gain weight as they age….)? Were these friendships made through work? Did the participants work in similarly sedentary or non-sedentary fields?
So many questions–I just can’t help but feel that the social contagion spin leaves an awful lot out and opens the door for some pretty horrific discrimination. Just think of what high school kids will do with this study–I shudder.
And no one even remarked upon the best line from the article: “Despite the research findings, people are not encouraged to sever their relationships.”
Doesn’t this mean that normally one would think that people would be encouraged to sever their relationships?
How far will the “research” studies have to go before fat people are banned as a Danger to Society.
Just sayin’.