Is obesity contagious?

Is obesity contagious? This article reinforces the idea that obesity has a social side. In the featured study, children tend to eat more when they are dining with their overweight friends than with their normal weight friends. When you think about it, that makes sense. Some disturbing stats:

Really, an "obesity bug"? In 2007, Harvard researcher Nicholas Christakis and his colleagues analyzed 32 years' worth of data from an interconnected social network of 12,000 adults and found that a person's chances of becoming obese increased 37% if a spouse had become obese, 40% if a sibling had and 57% if a friend had.

But by far the most disturbing point in the article:

Socializing with overweight people can change what we perceive as the norm; it raises our tolerance for obesity both in others and in ourselves.

I've made that point before as well. The longer we allow the obesity epidemic to spread, the more difficult it will be to stop. With two-thirds of the population being overweight or obese, it is already becoming the norm in some areas. That gives people less reason to maintain a healthy weight because the social pressure is lessening. Go to Manhattan and nearly everyone you see appears to be a healthy weight. Go to West Virginia, and well, not so much.

This is why I bring this topic up so much. There are a few forces at play that will bring down our society if we continue to let them. Obesity and greed are the two most powerful that come to mind. My suggestion would be that we dedicate a lot of resources to stopping their spread ASAP.