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        If you are feeling paunchy and obese, you now know why, and whom to blame: Your close friend is eating a lot. Obesity, in other words, is a social contagion. Don't think this is absurd. Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus. Or at least that is what the eternally-working researchers say. When a person gains weight, close friends tend to gain weight, too, is the gist of their findings. According to their study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and quoted by the New York Times, involved a detailed analysis of a large social network of 12,067 people who had been closely followed for 32 years, from 1971 until 2003. The investigators knew who was friends with whom, as well as who was a spouse or sibling or neighbour, and they knew how much each person weighed at various times over three decades. That let them examine what happened over the years as some individuals became obese.

        Researchers reported that people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased a person's chances of becoming obese by 57 per cent. There was no effect when a neighbour gained or lost weight, however, and family members had less influence than friends. Proximity did not seem to matter: the influence of the friend remained even if the friend was hundreds of miles away. And the greatest influence of all was between mutual close friends. There, if one became obese, the odds of the other becoming obese were nearly tripled. The same effect seemed to occur for weight loss, the investigators say. But since most people were gaining, not losing, over the 32 years of the study, the result was an obesity epidemic.

        The larger import of the study was that that friends affect each others' perception of fatness. When a close friend becomes obese, obesity may not look so bad. And that may also offer an uncanny sociological explanation to some countries, like the US, being a nation of obese people. It also may mean that the way to avoid becoming fat is to avoid having fat friends.

        But the bigger question is does the influence of friends and social contacts stop with obesity, or do they impact your other physical attributes. Of course, friends and acquaintances obviously have an effect on mental faculties. For instance, even without any researched empirical data we can easily deduce that a humorous friend can improve our own comical sense. But the question to ask is: If you are losing weight and your friend is gaining weight, who will influence whom? Researchers are, alas, silent on them.