Obesity is contagious

This is one study that will come as no shock to anyone who's tried to stay on a diet while hanging out with sugar-loving friends. They have found that having obese friends is likely to lead you into obesity as well.

The more obese friends you have, the more likely you are to become obese, a new study suggests. This confirms previous research that gaining weight may be socially contagious...

"We find that having four obese friends doubled people's chance of becoming obese compared to people with no obese friends," says Alison Hill, the study's lead author and a Harvard researcher.

About the rising incidence of obesity, she says, people have gotten better at gaining weight in recent years, but not at losing it.

David Rand, a Harvard research scientist who also worked on the study, says that the more obese people you have contact with, the more likely you are to become obese.

From my experience, the opposite is true as well - have a few friends working to lose weight or maintain their weight-loss makes you much more likely to be losing weight. Why? Simple - it's easier to exercise together, just as it's easier to pig out together. Whatever you make the center of your social calendar becomes central when you're craving human contact.

Is obesity contagious?

While it is true that the current generations are eating more fats and artificial flavorings/preservatives than past ones, scientists have still been at a loss to explain why more Americans and Europeans are obese than ever before. Not merely overweight, mind you, which is explainable by the rise of the couch potato, but actually obese. Many theories have been advanced, but now one is gaining the attention of more and more doctors. Obesity, in some cases, may be contagious - passed from person to person by a form of the common cold. A recent study showed that specific forms of one virus can cause fat cells to multiple unusually quickly, and laboratory animals infected with the virus grew fatter than uninfected controls, even when fed the same amount of food.

Of course, this is no excuse for failing to exercise or try to eat better. But it may provide a new therapy for those who have found it difficult to shed the pounds.