An article released by the AP is now claiming that obesity is ’socially contagious’. It kinda surprised me that even those who lived far far away from each other but had close relationships still gained mucho weight. Personally I think that lifestyle has a lot to do with it- if all your friends (or rather the majority) are Twinkie-eating, movie watching aficionados then my bet is that you’d prefer to partake in their activities, if no other reason than to be in their company.

On the other hand, if you’re naturally a Twinkie/movie fan and susceptible to gorging yourself in the aforementioned and you happen to have friends that are more active then chances are you might not participate in those activities as much as you might like. Introducing a few healthy options (more greens, smaller portions, no trans fat, green tea rather than coffee, etc) is a great start to decreasing your chance of hanging with the ‘wrong crowd’, and might even help you change some ‘bad habits’ from those you care about the most.

The full article can be found at [Forbes Online]