Researchers at Harvard University have come to the conclusion that fat friends and others in our social networks lead to obesity. They liken friends with fat to a virus that infects the brains of folks with the idea that it is ok to be fat. The result of this spreading epidemic of flab is that obesity rates in the US will rise to 42% of the adult population "within the next 40 years or so."
The researchers claim to have found a mathematical formula for predicting obesity. They say that everyone who is not obese has a 2% chance of becoming obese in a given year. Then they add that each social interaction a person has with someone who is obese raises their chance of becoming obese by 1/2 of one percent, according to an article published by Reuters.
Latest government statistics say that more than one third of Americans adults are now considered to be medically obese. And another third of US adults are overweight. Critics of the study and its methodology point out that obesity in America has been on a steady rise since 1970, and that the mathematical formula purportedly used by the researchers would mean that obesity would continue to increase very quickly and NOT slow down if the "social contagion" theory were true.
Other experts earlier this year made the claim that US obesity rates would top out at the current 34%. Critics of those claims point out that state reporting of obesity is under-calculated because it relies too heavily on non-medical data. Examples of this are states that calculate adult obesity rates based on citizen reported weights for drivers licenses.
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