The Fat of the Land
Yesterday’s headline story was all about fat people. Not just ordinary overweight folks, but F-A-T ones: morbidly obese avoirdupoidically challenged Americans. Seems a study just out claims obesity spreads (no pun meant) rather like a virus. Sort of contagious.
Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus, researchers are reporting today. When a person gains weight, close friends tend to gain weight, too……..people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased a person’s chances of becoming obese by 57 percent.
There was no effect when a neighbor gained or lost weight, however, and family members had less influence than friends….Proximity did not seem to matter: the influence of the friend remained even if the friend was hundreds of miles away…. The same effect seemed to occur for weight loss, the investigators say. But since most people were gaining, not losing, over the 32 years of the study, the result was an obesity epidemic. — NY Times
Wonderful news for the enabling industry, particularly the Czars of Eating Disorders, whose job is to make fat people (and other akrasiacs) feel better about themselves without challenging them to change. See, it’s not your fault if you don’t push back from the table, or mix in a mouthful of greens with your twice-daily helping of cholesterol a la mode, or cut down from your 6 cherry Cokes and 4 beers daily. Your best friend is a lard-ass, too. We’re all in this together, see?
Dr. Nicholas Christakis…a principal investigator in the new study, says one explanation is that friends affect each others’ perception of fatness. When a close friend becomes obese, obesity may not look so bad….“You change your idea of what is an acceptable body type by looking at the people around you,” Dr. Christakis said. (op.cit.)
I guess this also explains sexual activity in biker bars and leper colonies. Pigs don’t mind the smell of pigs, so why would fatties turn off other fatties?
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, there’s this:
The stigma that society attaches to obesity can cause children immediate, and possibly lasting, harm, according to a research review …. Overweight children and teens are commonly teased or ostracized by their peers, and sometimes treated differently by teachers and even parents. This, the review shows, can lead to low self-esteem, poor school performance, avoidance of physical activity and, in the most serious cases, depression and suicide. — ScientificAmerican.com
So on the one hand, associating with fat people reinforces further fat-making behavior, but the unfatted community, including (presumably unfat) parents, tend to drive the fat 
little brats to hari-kariville. Do I have this right? Or maybe there’s some tiny inconsistency in the alleged science reported here.
I’ll leave it to the apologists experts to sort out — but my bias is clear. This is all unadulterated horseshit aimed at ensuring the vocational viability of pseudo-scientists called “psychologists” who ply their sick witchcraft on the world’s weak, vulnerable, and gullible.
Got a weight problem? Drop your knives and forks, folks. Your first step is just that fucking simple. I’ll send my bill in the morning.
July 27th, 2007 at 5:22 am
While I fully agree with you that the study is bogus and just provides another excuse to belly up to the all-you-can-eat buffet, the real question is who sponsored this research and who paid for it? I’m willing to bet it was the US Government and we taxpayers got saddle with the bill…I feel lighter already! At least in my wallet.
July 27th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Once more, Steve, your baseless, tunnel-vision bias against professional psyhcologists and our humanitarian work is in full view. Why do you insist on airing our your ignorance in the face of all the measurable results available for review?
Even you don’t deny there are people who suffer eating disorders, many of whom are young people, and that these disorders manifest themselves as both self-starvation and over-eating. If this study provides insight into how those victims can combat their demons and lead better lives, why would you condemn it?
The only reason I can detect is your own incapacity to process real-world situations that don’t fit comfortably into your chosen ideology, which seems to rest on perverted libertarian premises that won’t admit the utility of what you deride as “the helping professions.” Like it or not, psychologists are scientists, and your stubborn refusal to confront this obvious fact only makes you and your ideology quaint at best, ignorant at worst, and possibly dangerous to boot.
Dave: the “obesity-as-virus” study was principally a statistical re-review of data compiled between 1971 and 2003 in what is known in the industry as the Framingham Study. It is a wealth of valuable knowledge that traced individuals’ diet and behavioral patterns for 30 years, and one of the most respected and cited study in the industry, assisting researchers in a host of problems, including cardio-pulminary disease, cancer, arthritis, etc. If public funds were used, it was money well spent.
July 27th, 2007 at 10:31 am
Ms. Schoen: While I defer to your apparent expertise in this area and the broader studies valuable findings, wouldn’t you agree that to link obesity to the obesity of friends is stretching the envelope a bit? Obesity is not a comunicable desease by any stretch of the imagination. It may have its psychological roots in some people, but its cetrainly not infectous! As one expert quoted in the article note, it would be impossible to corroborate any of these findings nbecause it would take another 30 years to duplicate.
July 27th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Once more, Libby, your locked-in, anti-intellectual fondness for the fluff and psychobabble you peddle as truth interferes with your capacity to see beneath the surface. My opinion about this study per se has little to do with my objections regarding its use by the likes of parasitic “therapists” like yourself who enable bad behavior rather than modify it. The fact that another study seems to contradict its conclusions doesn’t phase you in the least: in your line of work, you happily absorb one contradiction after another and la di da da da.
How about this statistic: there are more morbidly obese and overweight Americans today than any time in the nation’s history. Not coincidentally, there are more “specialists” practicing “therapy” for “victims” of eating disorders. Sound to you like the problem and the solution are exactly the same? It does to me.
July 27th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
All this is making me AND my friends hungry.
July 27th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Us, too, Dayngr. Me and my imaginary friends always hunger up together in the face of imaginary theories.
If obesity is contagious, can suntans be far behind?
July 27th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Dave: You’re quire right – the link isn’t an “organic” one, the way germs spread, for instance. It’s behavioral in nature, a case of peer acceptance, a shift in cultural standards. Underlying the behavior in Person A is an absorbed attitude, a belief that what he or she is surrounded and comfortable with is OK, including, in this case, weight gain that years ago would not have been.
It’s closer to a style change than an infection. Remember when the only time you saw a tattoo was when the sailors came to town? Now high school girls are the biggest consumers.
That noted, we still regard this as a pathological trend worthy of alarm. Obesity is decidedly unhealthy, and a statement of repressed self-esteem.
Steve: Your manipulation of statistics indicates nothing significant. You make it sound as though therapists are the reason for more cases of obesity than ever before, when in fact it’s the reverse. Think of the supply of therapists as market-driven. Nice try, though.
July 27th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
“It’s closer to a style change than an infection.”
And this is considered “science?”
Libby, there truly are people with eating disorders who hurt themselves and their loved ones. The commonsense approach would be to get them to either stop eating if they’re over-eating, or start eating if they’re starving themselves. Telling them they’re okay and that they “need to accept their own bodies,” which is what you clown-suited shrinks do, is just a hideous lie, and a paradigm of enabling.
The latest Framingham study data are fascinating. If true, I suspect what they show is how malleable and uncritical Americans have become; how impervious to introspection, how sheeplike. Your ideal world, Libby. Not mine.
July 27th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Steve you ever notice that there arent as many fat people up in Philly? Maybe its because they get off their fat ass’s and actually walk some place?
July 27th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Here are the 10 fattest cities in 2006, with their 2005 standing in parenthesis:
1. Chicago (5)
2. Las Vegas (9)
3. Los Angeles (21 fittest)
4. Dallas (6)
5. Houston (1)
6. Memphis, Tenn. (4)
7. Long Beach, Calif. (20)
8. El Paso, Texas (11)
9. Kansas City, Mo. (18)
10. Mesa, Ariz. (15)
Source: about.com:Chicago
http://chicago.about.com/od/aboutchicago/a/010705_fat.htm
I did notice there are fewer fatties up north, generally. Place where I saw the most fat people was northern Kentucky, where the only difference between the human beings and the cattle was the overalls.
(I would have said “the only thing that SEPARATES” them is the overalls, but often that’s not true.)
July 27th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I get it. Obesity spreads like a yawn, only slower. Would that it worked for love, taste, and insight.
July 28th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I am still looking for the Milf exibit at the Philly Zoo, anyone know where it is? Did we miss it?
July 28th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Does that photograph depict a meeting at Val Prieto’s Babalú “Man Camp?”
July 30th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
The photograph is the living Botero exhibit at Fairchild Gardens that replaced the Chihuly exhibit
August 1st, 2007 at 7:04 pm
They haven’t read “skinny bitch”. Then again,neither have I !
January 23rd, 2010 at 3:19 pm
oh my god fat ppl r disgusting and should be put on a deserted island!
February 2nd, 2010 at 1:10 pm
work it… you ladys look fabolous.hahaha
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:59 am
Anonymous: is a “desserted” island a place where they serve dessert?