Though there's no "obesity-carrying" virus, researchers at the University of California - San Diego have found that one of the most significant determining factors of obesity is one's close friends.
"The report documented that if a person became obese, his or her friends had a 57 percent higher chance of becoming obese also. If the friendship was a close one and considered mutual by both parties, that risk jumped to 171 percent."
The findings show that people are at greater risk for obesity if the overweight or obese person in their life is a close friend as opposed to a family member. The close friends influenced each other even if they weren’t living in close proximity. The researchers studied data from over 12,000 people that had been tracked from 1971 to 2003.
Read more at
Buzzle.com.
Labels: friends, influences, relationships