Beware !!!! obesity can be contagious

Now you may think twice being in company of obese people !!!!!!!

If a friend of yours becomes obese, you have a nearly 60% higher chance of sliding into this category as well, according to the analysis. The finding has prompted researchers to call obesity a "socially contagious" disease in which a sense of what constitutes a normal body weight passes from one person to the next.

Now Beware of long distance relationship also !!!!!!

Fowler notes that friends living nearby seemed to exert just as much influence on a person's weight as those living 800 kilometres (500 miles) away. To him, this suggests that the trend has more to do with a spread of social norms than behaviours. In other words, the idea of what constitutes a normal weight travels more easily across distance than do behaviours – such as exercise and eating routines.

James Fowler at the University of California in San Diego and Nicholas Christakis at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, both in the US, suggests that the spread of social norms rather than just behavioural changes might explain the rise in obesity.

This study is published in New England Journal of Medicine (vol 357, 370-379, 2007)