Family, Friends May 'Spread' Obesity

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A variety of explanations have been put forth on the epidemic, including less exercising and more eating. But because the epidemic is so widespread and affects all socioeconomic groups, there are likely several social and environmental explanations for the phenomenon, experts said.

The authors speculated that the ubiquity of social networks, and the natural inclination of people to be influenced by the appearance and behaviors of those around them, suggest that weight gain in one person might encourage weight gain in others. Having social contacts of a certain bodily size may also cause you to adopt certain behaviors, or other people's behaviors may even stimulate certain parts of the brain, such as those related to eating food.

To investigate this theory, the authors of this study evaluated more than 12,000 socially interconnected people in New England who had participated in the Framingham Heart Study, a landmark initiative aimed at unearthing the causes of cardiovascular disease. As part of that study, the individuals had undergone repeated measurements including body mass index (BMI) over more than three decades. At the beginning of the study, participants had been asked to identify their friends for follow-up purposes.

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The researchers found that thin and fat people tended to be clustered together, with the clusters extended to three degrees of separation. In other words, you're obese and so is you friend's friend's friend, or your friend's spouse's sister.

In addition, a person's odds of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if he or she had a friend who became obese over a certain time interval. If the two people were mutual friends, the odds increased to 171 percent.

And if one adult sibling became obese, the chances that the other sibling would also become obese increased by 40 percent.

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