Fat Friends Make You Fatter
Misery loves company perhaps, especially with America’s obesity epidemic. A Harvard University study claims that hanging out with obese friends apparently can be contagious.
According to Reuters:
[T]he study is based on the idea that obesity can spread like an infectious disease and people can catch it from their friends.
Harvard researcher Alison Hill told USA Today the following:
We find that having four obese friends doubled people’s chance of becoming obese compared to people with no obese friends.
The findings were based on long-term study of residents of Framingham, Massachusetts.
The flip side did not prove to be true. That is, social interaction with skinny people apparently has no effect on the waistline.
The Harvard team also predict that two out of every five Americans will be obese by the year 2050. About 30% of the country is currently considered obese.
The study was published in the PLoS Computational Biology journal.
Among other health conditions that are worsening because of obesity, diabetes is also on the increase in the U.S.
