If you think we're discriminated against now, just wait until THIS gets around, if it hasn't spread like wildfire already. I found this article in this morning's San Francisco Chronicle. Teach ME to read the news.

Here's the URL. I don't know how to get it to come out as a link, so if it doesn't link, I guess you'll have to cut-and-paste.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NG9AR6TEA1.DTL

I don't doubt the correlation between friendship and weight, just taking my own lifelong observations (I'm 57) into account. Unfortunately, I think this sstudy confuses cause and effect. They seem to conclude that friendship causes behavior, not taking into account that people who like -- or dislke -- the same things (e.g., celebrations featuring wonderful things to eat, physical activity or more cerebral forms of entertainment like reading, writing, classical music) are more likely to become friends. Given the great American addiction to the Quick Fix, no matter how obviously ridiculous, I fear we may become more outcast than we are now. Somebody, somewhere, in their terrror of us will insist that we be quarantined for the good of society and that will solve the obesity "epidemic." I can see the jackbooted, heavily armed, brown-shirt-clad Fat Police marching down the street now. I know I'm being melodramatic for effect, but I really do think this study could cause us grief.

So, whadday'all think of this?

Heh, currently about 4 discussions of this topic Want to post to one of the existing threads?

The study was longitudinal: it began with a random sample of people and took their weight and their friend's / relatives weights. It then tracked the same people over time, including the friends and relatives. After the focal person's weight went up, the friends' weight tended to (i.e., not always!) go up afterwards -- it wasn't just a matter of fat people choosing fat friends, thin people choosing thin friends, or relatives having similar genetics.

Although the longitudinal design isn't perfect for establishing causality -- no design is, since we can't randomly assign either weights or friends -- it's not just a simply, one-shot correlational study, either. The researchers did their jobs. (Disclaimer: the lead author is a former colleague of mine.)

As for what people do with this info, well, don't blame the messenger! And, frankly, if a thin friend dumps you [not you, personally, just a general "you"] because she's worried she might "catch" fat, then she wasn't much of a friend to begin with.

Yeah, I posted there as soon as I found the next thread about this. Is there a way to kill this thread? Mea culpa!