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Edited on Thu Jul-26-07 08:37 AM by Atman
Someone has to. My guess is the people who've responded haven't really paid very close attention to their own social settings. But here's an interesting little anecdote which is currently going on in my own life which certainly correlates with this study (which, btw, they claim was pretty extensive); take it for what it's worth, which I admit could be nothing.
One of the two guys I regularly ski/snowboard with is pretty round. I've been riding with him to the mountains for a few years, but last year we gradually stopped spending as much time together. (I'm 5'10, 185 lb, btw, but weighed 230 about 8 years ago, so don't try the "you're just a fat-ist!" stuff on me). He began inviting another buddy along with us, who just happened to be pretty large, too. We're also weekend neighbors so we see each other pretty regularly. We noticed that while we're still friends and talk to each other over the proverbial back yard fence, we were starting to decline summer party invitations because they're always at dinner time (well, duh), around 6:00 pm -- when me and my other friends are still playing beach volleyball. In the summer, with the sun up later, we'll play until dark and usually don't eat until 9:00 pm or so. We usually invite some of the players over for a beer afterward. I very politely told them that if we don't come to every backyard dinner event it's nothing personal, we just eat late in the summer and volleyball is our exercise in the summer time. No problem, they were very understanding.
So a couple of weekends ago, we declined a dinner invitation for entirely different reasons...we had invited a group of friends over to our place already (including the neighbor in question). The two backyard parties occurred concurrently, and we could see their group across the yard. Virtually every one of his guests were "large." To top it off, I knew every one of them, and they're all what you'd have to define as "blue collar" types. They do this every weekend...they sit around the campfire or at the picnic table and eat and drink. Eating and drinking is their recreation as volleyball is ours. The crowd on our deck wasn't even mostly volleyball players, but not one single person was overweight. And the make up of the crowd included a couple of PhDs, an MD, two APRN's, a couple of engineers, even a chiropractor and a dentist.
Did we ask for weight and background checks before we invited anyone? Did my neighbor? Of course not. But for some reason, his party was a gathering of overweight "blue collars," ours was a group of thin "professionals." Was it purely coincidence? The study is suggesting it's not. I don't know the answer, but I do know that it does jibe with some of our experiences. No one is saying it's "contagious" as in "you'll catch it from your friends." But, if you're hanging with a crowd whose main social activity is eating and drinking, chances are many in the group are going to be similarly built...because you're all spending your time eating and drinking. I'm surprised that people are getting so upset at this notion. It's not exactly a radical idea that people tend to hang out with people who share similar interests and lifestyles. Does it upset people to hear this because it's applied to overweight people, too?
:shrug:
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