Can obesity be contagious?

Obesity is not transmitted from one person to another by pathogens or other infectious microorganisms. But despite this, many voices say that there are factors that would allow it to be considered a contagious disease. In this case, social ties would act as infectious agents. Of course, it is a controversial thesis, and not all researchers accept it. But now, a study by the University of California is bringing new elements to bear on their behalf.

The report's authors studied two thousand teenagers and three thousand parents living on military bases in the United States. They were chosen because they are very closed communities in which their inhabitants maintain very close contact and end up sharing similar habits and customs. And what they observed was that one-quarter of the youth and three-quarters of the adults were overweight or obese. They even found that young people who lived on these bases for more than two years doubled the risk of gaining weight significantly.

For researchers, the cause lies in the fact that, having many common habits, the inhabitants of these communities are more at risk of being overweight if they relate very closely to people who are already overweight. And it is not the first study to draw similar conclusions.

As early as 2017, Harvard University's other research revealed that when a person gets fat considerably, it also increases the likelihood that his or her partner, close relatives and friends will do so. This study was conducted with more than 12,000 people and, according to its authors, the chances of gaining weight increase by more than 50% if you have obese friends.

Of course, studies such as these are not meant to further stigmatize people with weight problems, condemning them to abandonment by their friends. But they are a wake-up call for the rest, indicating that we must be careful not to copy certain bad eating habits.