The thing that strikes me in both the Christakis Ted Talk and the chapter overview is the omission of any information on patterns of the spread of "underweightness." Though I lack detailed statistics on the subject, this article from the National Center for Health Statistics shows that there has been a statistically significant decrease in underweight adults and children in the United States during the 2000's. Assuming Christakis and Fowler are correct and obesity spreads through social networks like a disease, either skinniness doesn't or the "virulence" of it is drastically decreasing in recent years as the spread of obesity has accelerated. Perhaps it's just the fact that obesity has become such a hot button issue and the two realized they could attract far more attention by discussing it, but I wonder what their research showed about people at the other end of the weight spectrum. It fascinates me that there could be "competing germs" that directly oppose one another, as these two do, and if anyone has additional information on the subject I would be grateful to hear it (a quick google search didn't yield anything besides the obesity article).
Another intriguing aspect of the Christakis and Fowler theory that I didn't see them elaborate on is that eating disorders clinics and "fat camps" are actually extraordinarily counter-productive. Just as they use the example of a smoker being surrounded by non-smokers in order to facilitate their quitting, the best method to treat both under- and overweight individuals might be to mix them together in the same group rather than isolating them with others who share similar problems. That way, their social network will not consist entirely of others who share their weight issues. This brings up another question that I couldn't find the answer to in the Ted Talk or book overview (I don't have the book yet due to Amazon super-saving shipping)-do they claim obese people get thinner if they have regular weight friends? Obese friends make you larger, apparently, but can you make your obese friends skinnier just by being around them? Spun that way, the research can be seen in a different light. That's my food for thought, anyway.
P.S. I've never collaborated on or even written a blog before, so hopefully I haven't committed any blogging faux pas. Thanks for reading!
-Michael
Tangent: I was really expecting to experience serious rage at the Christakis and Fowler stuff, but in his TED talk, Christakis actually explicitly rejected discrimination based on body size. That's so much more than I was hoping for.
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