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Obesity is Contagious...the Solution? Find Fit Friends!
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Why do we have a tendency to gain weight? The list is long and thanks to the New England Journal of Medicine there is yet another reason to add to the lengthy list...“The Buddy System”.
Nicholas Christakis, coauthor of the study and professor of Medical Sociology at Harvard Medical School puts it this way, “If your close friend becomes obese in a given time interval, there’s triple the risk that you will follow suit.” If your friend’s weight rises, statistically you are at greater risk of packing on the pounds too! The study takes matters one step further explaining that even people you’ve NEVER met have influence on your weight fluctuations (in a six-degrees-of-separations way). Just another reason to choose your friends wisely!
Jerri, DTR
Nutrition Specialist
"You never know what you can do, unless you try"
Labels: Obesity
Nice post.
We've a real problem with obesity.
In fact I recently blogged about this exact thing here: http://tinyurl.com/38zvkm
In short: In May of 2002, the World Health Organization announced a rise in obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Remarkably, this occurred not only in affluent developed nations - but also among developing nations in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, where malnutrition was once the major dietary issue.
Obesity in the developing world can be seen as a result of a series of changes in diet, physical activity, health and nutrition, collectively known as the ‘nutrition transition.’ As poor countries become more prosperous, they acquire some of the benefits along with some of the problems of industrialized nations. These include obesity.
Since urban areas are much further along in the transition than rural ones, they experience higher rates of obesity. Cities offer a greater range of food choices, generally at lower prices. Urban work often demands less physical exertion than rural work. And as more and more women work away from home, they may be too busy to shop for, prepare and cook healthy meals at home. The fact that more people are moving to the city compounds the problem. In 1900, just 10 percent of the world population inhabited cities. Today, that figure is nearly 50 percent.
Read more here: http://tinyurl.com/2scnhk
Very good. Another reason to isolate and discriminate against over weight people.
It doesn't have to be isolation/discrimination against over weight people... we can choose to be the catalyst for change among our friends if we want to.
And I think a lot of this just simply has to do with the fact that people who like doing similar things (going out to eat or watching movies, vs going out to walk in the park/play tennis/ something active) hang out together. Not a whole lot of earth shattering research should have been required to reach that conclusion.
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