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obesity

Can Obesity Spread Through Social Connections?

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Take a peek at your family and friends.  Do the bulk of them seem to be overflowing their chairs?

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (N Engl J Med 2007;357:370-9) found that if you’re struggling with your weight, there is a good chance that your friends and family are, too.

Using data collected over 22 years from a “densely interconnected social network” of 12,067 people  (part of the Framingham Heart Study), researchers determined that the risk of obesity extended to three degrees of separation.

Here’s what they found:

  • A person’s chance of becoming obese increases by 57% if he or she has a friend who becomes obese. In a mutual friendship, the person’s risk of obesity increases by 171% if the friend becomes obese.
  • Among pairs of adult siblings, if one sibling becomes obese the chance that the other becoming obese increases by 40%.  This is more prevalent among siblings of the same sex (55%) than among siblings of the opposite sex (27%).  Among brothers, the chance of becoming obese increases by 44% if a brother becomes obese, and among sisters there’s a 67% increased risk if a sister becomes obese. Obesity in a sibling of the opposite sex doesn’t seem to affect the obesity risk of the other one.
  • Among married couples, when one spouse is obese the other is 37% more likely to become obese. Husbands and wives appear to affect each other similarly (44% and 37%, respectively).
  • Neighbors in the immediate geographic location don’t seem to have an effect on a person’s obesity.
  • Pairs of friends and siblings of the same sex seem to have more influence on the weight gain of each other than pairs of friends and siblings of the opposite sex. In same sex friendships, the probability of obesity in one person increases by 71% if the friend becomes obese.  For friends of the opposite sex there’s no significant association.  In same sex friendships, a man has a 100% increased chance of becoming obese if his male friend becomes obese.  For female friends, the spread of obesity is a non-statistically significant 38%.

The researchers concluded, “obesity appears to spread through social ties.” Is it time to take a look around you?

How Obesity Threatens Our Future

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Since 2006, Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have released an annual report on obesity.  This year’s report, F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2011 (available as a PDF download), unveils some downright alarming statistics.

Some Major Findings:

Adult Obesity Rates and Trends (2008-2010)

  •  Adult obesity rates rose in 16 states over the past year. No state had a decrease.
  •  Obesity rates exceed 25% in more than two-thirds of states (38 states).
  •  Mississippi had the highest rate of obesity at 34.4%; Colorado the lowest at 19.8% — the only state with a rate below 20%.
  •  Obesity and obesity-related diseases (like diabetes and hypertension) remain the highest in the South. Nine of the 10 states with the highest rates of diabetes and physical inactivity are in the South as well the 10 states with the highest rates of hypertension. Northeastern and Western states have the lowest rates of obesity.
  •  In the past year adult diabetes rates increased in 11 states and Washington, D.C.; more than 10% of adults in eight states now have type 2 diabetes.
  •  Obesity increased for men in nine states and for women in ten states, and decreased for women in one state (Nevada).
  •  People who didn’t graduate from high school have the highest rates of obesity (32.8%). High school graduates who didn’t go to college or technical school have the second highest obesity rate (30.4%).  People who went to college/technical school had an obesity rate of 29.6%; graduates from college/technical school had the lowest obesity rate, 21.5%.
  •  Households with an income less than $15,000 have a 33.8% obesity rate; households with an income above $50,000 have a 24.6% obesity rate.

Changes in Adult Obesity, Overweight, Diabetes, and Hypertension Over Time

  • Twenty years ago no state had an obesity rate above 15%.
  •  Twenty years ago the state with the highest combined obesity and overweight rate was 49%; now the lowest rate is 54.8%; 44 states are above 60%.
  •  Twenty years ago, 37 states had hypertension rates over 20%; now every state is over 20%; nine are over 30%.
  •  Over the past 15 years seven states have doubled their obesity rates; 10 states nearly doubled theirs with increases of at least 90%; 22 more states saw their  obesity rates increase by at least 80%.
  •  Since 1995 obesity rates have grown the fastest in Oklahoma, Alabama, and Tennessee and the slowest in Washington, D.C., Colorado, and Connecticut.
  •  Ten years ago there weren’t any states with an obesity rate above 24%; now 43 states have higher obesity rates than the state that was the highest in 2000.

Top Recommendations

“The report includes recommendations for policies to help leverage change quickly and efficiently, by providing individuals and families with the resources and opportunities to make healthier choices in their daily lives. For instance, the report calls for the strategic implementation of the ACA, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, and other federal and state policy changes to help prevent and control obesity in America.”

Please take notice.  To see more recommendations and to read the full report click here.

A Healthy Eating Lesson On The Subway

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New York city, uptown #2 train, Saturday night.  Not too crowded, most people are wearing their subway stares – avoiding eye contact, eyes glazed over, ipod earbuds in place, bodies rocking with the motion of the train.  My trip isn’t long enough to pull out something to read, so I start to scan the ads that run above the seats– something I’ve entertained myself with since I was a little kid.

One whole side of the subway car I was in was filled with posters for New York City’s “Are You Pouring On The Pounds” campaign — aimed at teaching people to reduce their sugar intake (and lose or keep off weight) by cutting down on sugary drinks. It also encourages New Yorkers to drink water, seltzer or low-fat milk instead of the sweet stuff.

The posters are filled with liquid pouring out of bottles of soda, “sports” drinks or sweetened iced tea and turning into blobs of fat as it reaches the glass. Large graphics leave you with no doubt about the number of teaspoons or packets of sugar in each drink — or the total amount of liquid sugar that you could drink daily – as shown in the photo above.

For example: a 20 ounce bottle of soda is equivalent to 16 packets of sugar and a 32 ounce gigantic size cup – the kind so popular in movie theaters, gas stations, and arenas — contains the equivalent of 26 packets of sugar.

Do You Forget To Count The Calories You Drink?

It’s hard to overeat without noticing it. But, many people who gain weight — and can’t figure out why — forget to include the calories in what they drink.  Sugary drinks can add hundreds of calories and they don’t even make you feel full.

On average, Americans now consume 200 to 300 more calories each day than 30 years ago, with nearly half of those calories coming from sugar-sweetened drinks. A survey of adult New Yorkers shows that more than 2 million drink at least one sugar sweetened soda or other sweetened beverage each day – often at 250 calories a pop. Teenagers who drink sugary beverages get an average of 360 calories from them each day.  (They’d have to walk 70 city blocks to use up that many calories.)

Some Facts

A teaspoon of sugar weighs about four grams and each gram of sugar has four calories – or about 16 calories per teaspoon of sugar. On average, Americans consume about 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day – the equivalent of around 350 calories.  (Added sugar refers to the extra, empty calorie, added sweeteners, not the sugar that naturally occurs in foods like fruit and milk.)

The quickest way to decrease some of that sugar is to cut down on soda and sweetened drinks.   Sugary drinks, including sweetened tea or sweetened water that claims to be healthy, account for about one-third of added sugars.

Eating large quantities of sugar can lead to obesity and health problems like diabetes and heart disease. The American Heart Association recommends a daily max of six teaspoons of added sugar for women and nine teaspoons for men.  That’s quite a bit less than 22 teaspoons Americans generally average.  Too many spoonfuls of sugar may create the need for medicine rather than making it easily go down!