RoR: Forum

Post 0

Thursday, July 26, 2007 - 7:42am

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What do you think of this new 'study' claiming obesity to be contagious? I for one think we are over studied, that we have been reduced to statistics and are really not getting any good use of all this research and 'discovery'.

Post 1

Thursday, July 26, 2007 - 8:12am

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Steve:

"Researchers think it's more than just people with similar eating and exercise habits hanging out together."

From what I can glean from the article, they seem to have minimized this obvious factor of people with similar body types hanging out together. After all, what slim, athletic guy or gal is going to hang out with a fat slob? They probably don't have any interests in common.

Steve: You've said you're unfamiliar with posting on this forum. You could have posted this as a news item, but in any case it's useful to give a link to the article in question.

Obesity is Contagious.

or

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070725/D8QJT64G0.html

Sam

(Edited by Sam Erica on 7/26, 8:18am)

Post 2

Thursday, July 26, 2007 - 8:17am

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Hey, thanks for the help Sam.

I agree with you. One statement went a little something like this: If one of your friends becomes obese there is a 50% chance you will also. Well, does that also mean that if one of your friends gets fit theres a 50% chance you will also? This stuff seem so superfluous to me.

The worst of it all is we are probably paying for this through some grant from the National Science Foundation.
(Edited by Steve
on 7/26, 8:18am)

Post 3

Thursday, August 2, 2007 - 11:06pm

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I understand your sentiment here -- all I could do when I initially read this study was to shake my head in disgust. Evidently, our overweight friends use some Spock-like mind meld on us, subconsciously forcing us to eat unhealthy foods and to forego exercise.

Post 4

Friday, August 3, 2007 - 5:22pm

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Without drilling into the details of the study, I will tell you that one reason I quit Mensa arose from the terrible eating habits of my fellow members! I avoid junk food chiefly by not purchasing it and thus keeping it from arm's reach in the house. Attending Mensa events totally blew this strategy. As books like The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz observe, human will has upper limits. I could resist purchasing junk food while visiting the grocery store on a full stomach, but I had much more trouble resisting chips, chocolates and other goodies at Mensa gatherings.

Needless to say, some Mensa members seem to strive to make their waistline measurements match their intelligence quotients!

So, yes, I can see some truth to the hypothesis that skinny people could grow fat through adoption of the bad health habits of their close friends. I see from the linked article that scientists urged people not to dissolve friendships because of this issue. I disagree. I suggest finding people with objectively superior values and making friends with them in such a fashion as to squeeze away the people with objectively inferior values.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 8/03, 5:26pm)

Post 5

Friday, August 3, 2007 - 5:43pm

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This scientific merit of this article (if one can actually call it that, since it's just the rehash of a press release of a government agency) is less than dubious. How much does anyone want to bet that the same institute will soon be lobbying congress for a TV campaign alone the lines of the abominable "Truth" campaign paid for through the extortion of the tobacco companies.

Luke has mentioned an obvious mechanism, but he was able to use common sense, and didn't require a government grant to do so.

Ironically, lab studies have shown that rodents can become obese after a certain type of viral infection. That this may happen in humans is plausible but hasn't been proven so far as I know. Here is an actually clinically demonstrable syndrome - which this article didn't mention at all.

Ted