So it has finally come to this. The great fear of people everywhere has come true. Being friends with - or even knowing someone who knows someone who is fat - can make you fat too. Run! Hide! Protect the children!

Geez. Are these people nuts??

Before addressing the outright stupidity of this "study" and the way it was done, let me say right now that this sort of crap does nothing but promote discrimination, intolerance, and the isolation toward larger individuals everywhere.

In an amazing blunder of sane thought, the July 26, 2007 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine published an article by Nicholas Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., and James H. Fowler, Ph.D. titled "The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years. This was based on a "quantitative analysis of the nature and extent of the person-to-person spread of obesity as a possible factor contributing to the obesity epidemic." The conclusion reached was that "obesity appears to spread through social ties." The resulting warning was of implications for public health interventions. You may read the full text of the study by clicking here.

In 1948 the Framingham Heart Study was begun. Over 5,000 people were involved in the original study. These people were followed over the years with regular physical exams and questionnaires. Height and weight was recorded at each exam. Each person in the study was asked to provide contact information - someone who would know where they could be reached should there be some disconnection of availability. These contacts could be a spouse, relative, neighbor, or friend.

It's more detailed than this, but basically the "researchers" got in touch with the contacts and asked if they had gained any weight in the time they had known the person who had listed them. Guess what. Some of them had! Conclusion - knowing someone who is fat can cause you to gain weight. The closer the relationship, the more chance you had of getting fat. Spouses and siblings - look out! But even knowing someone who knows a fat person can cause you to chunk up too. Amazing, but long suspected by fat bigots everywhere. The "study" contains a lot of charts and lots of numbers. It's pretty. Relationships were measured by mental, emotional, and geographic closeness to the potentially contagious fatty - the closer you are in any of these areas, the greater your chances of becoming fat.

My favorite part of the study is this statement:

"Because friendship identifications are directional, we studied three different kinds of friendships: an "ego-perceived friendship," in which an ego identifies an alter as a friend; an "alter-perceived friendship," in which an alter identifies an ego as a friend; and a "mutual friendship," in which the identification is reciprocal. We hypothesized that a friend's social influence on an ego would be affected by the type of friendship, with the strongest effects occurring in mutual friendships, followed by ego-perceived friendships, followed by alter-perceived friendships. Our reasoning was that the person making the identification esteems the other person and may wish to emulate him or her."

Seriously - how many people look at fatness and decide that it would be so cool to get fat?

It makes no sense on any level but random speculation and even that should raise a great deal of skepticism. I can see that if two spouses are living together, the weight gain may be based on similar lifestyles. Siblings share the same genes, so might be inclined toward weight gain with age.

A member of one of the Size Wise email lists, Sue Widemark,* has written:

"Finally the last sentence of the conclusion is most troubling. From this erroneous study based on a false picture of the social network of the cohort (a picture which only depicts members of the cohort as having only ONE close friend at any given time), these researchers concluded that:

" 'This highlights the necessity of approaching obesity not only as a clinical problem but also as a public health problem.'

"It's almost as if this "study" builds and analyzes a false picture of the social network of the individuals of the cohort to come to a conclusion with political overtones based on what is a buzz word to many Americans i.e. "public health", the implications of which in the extreme, could lead to treating overweight people like lepers were treated in the past. That is, falsely portraying obesity as a "contagious disease" in order to perpetuate the ostracism of anyone who is overweight. Hopefully society is not that insane - yet, but this type of thing is a bit chilling to think about, to put it mildly."

I have a question. Well, many questions about the tripe Drs. Christakis and Fowler have foisted upon us. Who doesn't have a relative, friend, or friend of a friend who is fat? Can you seriously state that being a person with any of these relationships raises your chances of getting fat - sometimes as much as 42%? I have many, many relatives and friends who have not gained any weight at all in the time they have known me. Some of my friends have gained some weight. Does that mean I caused it? I have, after all, cooked meals for many of these people. We have even sat on our rears and watched a movie together rather than going jogging. Should I start feeling guilty and should they stay away from me in the future, even refusing email correspondence?

Read absolutely everything with a touch of skepticism. Give it all a "gut feeling" once over. This random fact "study," even though published in an otherwise reputable journal, doesn't pass the common sense test. It is counter-intuitive on so many levels.

My biggest concern is the impact this nonsense thinking will have on chubby children. We all know people who will tell their children not to play with the fat kid because their kid might get fat too. After all, it's a "proven fact." Disgusting.

*Visit Sue Widemark's sites, Suethsayings or Healthread.net