LOS ANGELES �?? If your friends and family get fat, chances are you will too, researchers report in a startling new study that suggests obesity is “socially contagious” and can spread easily from person to person.
This is why I live in a cave all by myself, far away from all the fat people!
I have to keep my daughter home from daycare when she has a runny nose…Maybe I should suggest the chubby kids stay home so they don’t spread the obesity.
I would imagine it is because families eat from the same pantry and friends generally resemble each other in preferences whether it be clothing style, social views and activities… including eating.
Fatties will hang out with fatties and eat fatty food.
Athletes will hang out with athletes and play sports, train etc.
Musicians will hang out with other musicians due to a common love of music and playing instruments.
Maybe a musician is fat and has thin musician friends. His thin musician friends start splitting pizzas with him during practice, pick up junk food at gas stations on their way to a gig etc and get fat.
Husbands with fat wives and children with fat parents will come home to a pantry full of shitty food and will get and stay fat.
Calling it an epidemic is a little extreme, but asking the public to be cautious certainly is not.
I may be relatively young, but i can remember when going to the beach or neighborhood pool was fun because you could check out all the hotties in bikinis.
Now it’s just gross. Even the life gaurds are fat. By the time you see a diamond in the rough, you are so mentally scarred by the 55 yr old 250lb whale in a thong that you saw up the beach it doesn’t even matter. Your sexuality will be dead for days.
Well, whaddya think, vroom? Does the idea that obesity is a social contagion have merit, or should we ignore it until there’s more data?
[quote]kroby wrote:
Well, whaddya think, vroom? Does the idea that obesity is a social contagion have merit, or should we ignore it until there’s more data?[/quote]
Kroby, I think you are pulling my leg. This is another case of correlation vs causation… at least as far as I can tell from what I’ve seen.
Anyway, the fact that the media likes to confuse the two in order to make interesting headlines doesn’t mean we should be jumping to wild conclusions ourselves.
Is there a correlation? Of course, the study indicates this fact. If you want to cross the street when you see a fat person, in case it is contagious, you go right ahead.
On the other hand, there are a million reasons that can easily be suggested for such a correlation. Not the least of which is that as people age they get fatter, so that when one ages and succumbs first, it makes all kinds of sense that their similarly aged peers will also succumb.
Don’t blame me, I’m just a messenger…
I just drove past the college and saw a dozen girls hanging out together on the street corner. They were all pretty chunky (50-lbs overweight?) and they were all smoking. I guess it was the weekly meeting of the Fat Smoking Girls of Santa Rosa club.
There used to be a joke that if you wanted to look skinny, you should hang out with fat friends. Sounds like that’s not such a good idea after all.
Fat is epidemic where there are higher levels of energy consumption and wealth.
You don’t see obesity epidemic in the third world.
The people trying to pass it off as a “disease” are fucking idiots. You wouldn’t see someone in a concentration camps suddenly catch the “fat disease”.
Is everyone trying to be the fat friend?
Its just the decent thing to do, to cover your mouth while coughing. Now it should be clear that fat people need to cover up because its contagious! Im walking around blind folded.
People like people like themselves. So if a friend of yours gets fat, chances are, that whatever was inside of that fat friend is inside you.
I’m not sure why this is surprising.
It’s like saying, “Having successful friends means you’ll be successful.” Well, duh. The types of people I have been friends with over the years have been quality. So [u]of course[/u] they are successful. If you hang out with losers, chances are, you are or will be a loser.
In other news: Scientists have concluded that eating 5 smaller meals a day is better for you than eating one meal of cake and ice cream.
[quote]CaliforniaLaw wrote:
In other news: Scientists have concluded that eating 5 smaller meals a day is better for you than eating one meal of cake and ice cream.[/quote]
Damn!
[quote]CaliforniaLaw wrote:
In other news: Scientists have concluded that eating 5 smaller meals a day is better for you than eating one meal of cake and ice cream.[/quote]
So if I cut my cake into pieces…
. . . . you know you want to click it.
[quote]Brant_Drake wrote:
http://fat-girl.ytmnd.com/
. . . . you know you want to click it.[/quote]
hmmmm, I clicked it and I’d hit it! She’s actually kinda hawt.
[quote]red04 wrote:
CaliforniaLaw wrote:
In other news: Scientists have concluded that eating 5 smaller meals a day is better for you than eating one meal of cake and ice cream.
So if I cut my cake into pieces…[/quote]
You actually would deal with the calories much more effectively than if you ate the whole thing at once.
just to play devils advocate.
NAAFA’s rebuttal
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 25, 2007
The report released today by the New England Journal of Medicine is flawed. These so-called researchers took collected data from an existing study whose focus was not on weight and size, the same study just used to report that diet soda is just as bad for you as regular soda, did some data mining and presented selected results tailored to support their own prejudices. None of their statistics are standard. Shame on the New England Journal of Medicine for publishing this insidious report. This is one more attempt to create hysteria, hatred, fear and prejudice toward fat people.
As an example of the misinformation, this report stated, �??The fact that the increase in obesity during this period cannot be explained by genetics�?�.�?? More and more legitimate research is finding the genetic link to size. Let�??s look at an example. Studies by Dr. Albert Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania showed that:
�?� 70 percent of the variation in peoples�?? weights may be accounted for by inheritance, meaning weight is more strongly inherited than nearly any other condition, including mental illness, breast cancer or heart disease.
�?� There is a clear relation between the body-mass index of biologic parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that genetic influences are important determinants of body fatness.
�?� There is no relation between the body-mass index of adoptive parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that childhood family environment has little or no effect on body size.�??
�?� Identical twins have nearly identical body mass indexes, whether they have been reared apart or together.
Bob Schwartz, author of Diets Don�??t Work found that by putting his thin clients on weight-loss diets, they gained weight. Maybe we should take a closer look at the influence of weight loss dieting. Quite possibly when thin friends go on diets with their fat friends to lend their support, they end up gaining weight. It has already been proven that pounds lost plus additional pounds are regained after one has stopped the severe restrictions of weight loss dieting in more than 95% of dieters.
We already know that fat people are discriminated against on their jobs and by insurance and healthcare providers. We believe that this report indicates that thin people tend to exclude fat people from their social networks and now proves that there is social discrimination against people of size. We believe that this report encourages even further discrimination against fat people. It�??s time to stop the discrimination now!
Founded in 1969, NAAFA is a non-profit human rights organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for fat people. NAAFA works to eliminate discrimination based on body size and provide fat people with the tools for self-empowerment through public education, advocacy, and member support.
[quote]Huh? wrote:
NAAFA’s rebuttal
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 25, 2007
The report released today by the New England Journal of Medicine is flawed. These so-called researchers took collected data from an existing study whose focus was not on weight and size, the same study just used to report that diet soda is just as bad for you as regular soda, did some data mining and presented selected results tailored to support their own prejudices. None of their statistics are standard. Shame on the New England Journal of Medicine for publishing this insidious report. This is one more attempt to create hysteria, hatred, fear and prejudice toward fat people.
As an example of the misinformation, this report stated, �??The fact that the increase in obesity during this period cannot be explained by genetics�?�.�?? More and more legitimate research is finding the genetic link to size. Let�??s look at an example. Studies by Dr. Albert Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania showed that:
�?� 70 percent of the variation in peoples�?? weights may be accounted for by inheritance, meaning weight is more strongly inherited than nearly any other condition, including mental illness, breast cancer or heart disease.
�?� There is a clear relation between the body-mass index of biologic parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that genetic influences are important determinants of body fatness.
�?� There is no relation between the body-mass index of adoptive parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that childhood family environment has little or no effect on body size.�??
�?� Identical twins have nearly identical body mass indexes, whether they have been reared apart or together.
Bob Schwartz, author of Diets Don�??t Work found that by putting his thin clients on weight-loss diets, they gained weight. Maybe we should take a closer look at the influence of weight loss dieting. Quite possibly when thin friends go on diets with their fat friends to lend their support, they end up gaining weight. It has already been proven that pounds lost plus additional pounds are regained after one has stopped the severe restrictions of weight loss dieting in more than 95% of dieters.
We already know that fat people are discriminated against on their jobs and by insurance and healthcare providers. We believe that this report indicates that thin people tend to exclude fat people from their social networks and now proves that there is social discrimination against people of size. We believe that this report encourages even further discrimination against fat people. It�??s time to stop the discrimination now!
Founded in 1969, NAAFA is a non-profit human rights organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for fat people. NAAFA works to eliminate discrimination based on body size and provide fat people with the tools for self-empowerment through public education, advocacy, and member support.
[/quote]
The level of propaganda and denial is quite simply staggering… But then again I had an argument with someone who believed that creatine was useless or at the very least used only has a masking agent for steroids!
Just goes on to prove that when you’re bent on believing something, no amount of data is gonna convince you otherwise.