The Framingham Study

From a Wired Magazine article, click here to read the whole article.

A fairly well-known study was started  in Framingham, MA in 1948 with the original intention of studying heart disease. Over 5000 Framingham residents have participated and has been very successful in terms of exposing risk factors for heart disease, you know, all the usual suspects like smoking and high blood pressure.

A few years ago, the data was studied by other scientists because all of the participants had close friends and relatives documented in their files  in case the study group lost track of a participant and wanted to track them down. These scientists were interested in the social networking aspect of this study, and their findings were astonishing. To make a long story short, they determined that if your spouse is obese, your risk of also becoming obese is 37% higher than normal, and if you have an obese friend, you chances rise by 171%. Clearly, overweight friends don’t help each other.

From Parade Magazine, click here for the whole article.
Parade Magazine takes this information a step further and tries to explain why this phenomenon happens, how people are greatly influenced by their friends and peers, even children are affected. It was suggested that perhaps a group of overweight people eating together have no one around who prevents themselves from overeating, and therefore sets an example for others.

If you have overweight friends and family, you should try to get everyone invested in controlling impulse eating, so you do have positive influences around you.  It’s important!