Obese friends can be “contagious”, says a new American study, because they “share” the same habits and activities that lead to fattening.
Obese friends have the same culinary habits, eating at the restaurant, where they encourage each other to go for their favorite dishes, and also they practice the same sedentary activities.
Researchers at the “Center for Global Health” in Arizona have questioned 101 women about how they perceive their body, and then asked the same questions to their relatives and friends (800 people in total). After that, everyone have had measured their body mass index – the ratio between weight and height.
The report concluded that obesity is transmitted from one to another in the same social groups. The women who participated to the study had double risk of obesity if their friends were obese. But friends do not have the same perceptions about obesity, meaning that two friends with the same body mass index may perceive differently their weight.
In addition, women said they would prefer to suffer from other diseases than being obese. 15% of them prefer to suffer from depression than obesity, 14.5% would rather be blind, and half of them would even give five years of their life just to be skinny.