Thursday, Sep. 03, 2009
The Social Side of Obesity: You Are Who You Eat With
By Shahreen Abedin
Sending your kids back to lunch-lady land this fall? Careful, your child's dining mates may be upping his chances of packing on the pounds. A study published in the August issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds that how much tweens and teens eat can be influenced by how much their friends weigh. (See Photos: "What the World Eats: Part I")
In the study, 130 kids ages 9 to 15 were allowed to snack as much as they wanted while hanging out with a friend or with a peer they did not know. All the kids ate more when they were with a friend than with a stranger. But the overweight children ate the most when paired with an overweight friend — an average of 300 more calories than when they spent time with leaner friends. The research also found that friendship itself makes the appetite grow stronger: when overweight kids ate with similar-weight kids who were already their pals, they threw back an extra 250 calories than they did with chubby kids they had just met.
Lead researcher and clinical psychologist Sarah-Jeanne Salvy says her research demonstrates an eye-opening social theory: obesity can be contagious.(See a special report on the science of appetite.)
Really, an "obesity bug"? In 2007, Harvard researcher Nicholas Christakis and his colleagues analyzed 32 years' worth of data from an interconnected social network of 12,000 adults, and found that a person's chances of becoming obese increased by 37% if a spouse had become obese, 40% if a sibling had and 57% if a friend had.
Socializing with overweight people can change what we perceive as the norm; it raises our tolerance for obesity both in others and in ourselves. It's also about letting your hair down. Past research has shown that adults tend to eat more around friends and family than they do with strangers. They shed their inhibitions about how it looks when they go back for thirds or order the alfredo sauce instead of the marinara. (See Photos: "What the World Eats: Part II")
Finally, there's the idea that we just like to hang with people that are like ourselves. Cornell food sociologist Jeffrey Sobal explains that "especially among two overweight people, there's a sort of permission-giving going on. We're encouraging each other to eat more."
More at:
http://www.time.com/time/print...8816,1919885,00.html
Goal: Stop stress snacking.
