The Power of Normal

You’ve probably already read about this new study
that found that Obesity can spread from friend
to friend.

According to the New York Times article:

The answer, the researchers report, was that people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased a person’s chances of becoming obese by 57 percent. There was no effect when a neighbor gained or lost weight, however, and family members had less influence than friends.

It did not even matter if the friend was hundreds of miles away, the influence remained. And the greatest influence of all was between close mutual friends. There, if one became obese, the other had a 171 percent increased chance of becoming obese, too.

The same effect seemed to occur for weight loss, the investigators say. But since most people were gaining, not losing, over the 32 years, the result was, on average, that people grew fatter.

But how does obesity (or weight loss) spread
from person to person?

Thanks Lisa of “The Toby Show” !

Lisa of The Toby show wrote a very heartening
piece about being inspired (partly by Unplug Your
Kids and tvSmarter!)  to cut back on her son’s
TV watching.

She writes about having the best of intentions to
keep TV to a minimum, but how easy it is for it to
creep up to higher levels. Educational and “age-appropriate”
videos can seem so benign and innocuous that watching
more is completely easy (like falling off a log).

Scientific American

Here is a comment I posted at the Scientific
American website regarding Television Addiction
Is No Mere Metaphor

Baby Einstein Videos Educational No More

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC)
has forced Disney to stop marketing “Baby Einstein”
videos as “Educational”.

Excellent work CCFC !!!!

Here is a copy of CCFC’s announcement: