Study says getting fat is contagious

gzlaser

from 21st Century

But is our sense of identity really that fragile?

IF you've gained a lot of weight recently, tell your best friend to go on a diet. It's very likely that he (or she) has also added a few pounds, according to a study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Hopefully it won't ruin your friendship, but researchers have found that when an overweight person puts on 17 pounds, his buddy has a 57 per cent chance of gaining five pounds too. If your best friend becomes fat, the risk of you joining him is almost three times as high – even if you live hundreds of miles apart.

It seems that if we're surrounded by friends and family who are plump, we tend to change our idea about what is an acceptable body weight.

But is our sense of identity really that fragile? What happened to individuality, having personal convictions, a sense of self, our own ideas about our own bodies? If we're so easily influenced by others, what will the results of this study mean to those who are desperate to be fashionably thin? Will their friendships be able to withstand this, or will they begin hiding from their corpulent friends? Would there be enough thin people to go around if weight watchers all began to look for new pals?

The researchers did point out that many other studies have shown the benefits of having lots of friends, so they are hoping no friendships will be ruined because of their findings. So am I.

There are 1.5 billion adults across the world who struggle with their weight every day and another 400 million who are obese. In a world already full of too many people whose lives are influenced by the numbers of a scale, this study just opened up a whole new can of worms.

I can just hear the questions now: If I have two fat friends who both gain weight, will I gain 10 pounds? Does this work the same way for thin people? If I lose 17 pounds, will my friends each lose five?

I say that as long as we're not harming our bodies, let's just eat whatever we want to eat, whenever we want to eat it, in whatever amounts we want to eat. Or we can all just become incredibly shallow and go out and find new friends – thin ones.

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plump丰满的

obese 肥胖的

BONUS POINTS

open a can of worms: 引起麻烦，引出问题

The investigation into how these expensive trips were paid for opened a big can of worms. 对如何支付昂贵的旅途开销的调查引出了不少问题。