According to this article, obesity spreads through social networks - more specifically - strong ties. The article states that there is a 37-57% chance of you becoming obese if you have a spouse, sibling, or close friend who is obese. In the article, there was no dependence on proximity of the individual to cause these effects - it was the social network that influenced the individual’s weight. Jennifer A. Johnson, from VCU, said “What you find is the stronger the tie, the more alike two people become.” This comment agrees with the strong tie analysis from earlier in the class – that we form strong links with those who are like us.

What the article does takes from these observations is that obesity is a collective problem – not an individual one. This means a collective solution must be made to improve everyone’s well-being. This implicitly argues that obesity – and its solution – are cascades on poor and good health. When our friends eat well, we follow what they do because we want to be more like them, and strengthen the bond we have by being more similar. Using this notion, we can help combat obesity by having a few individuals take the first step and try to become more healthy, which will put an pressure on the dynamics of the links and influence their friends to become more health-conscious. When a enough people do this, there should be a cascade of people trying to lose weight which will cause even more people to do the same. Of course, this is an unstable equilibrium, as it would be more like human nature to cause an even greater cascade of obesity since this is the current cascade that is underway (Obesity is the stable equilibrium at the moment, unfortunately). Overturning the current cascade effects has proven to be difficult, as we have hit the tipping point for obesity, both in mass of people and mass of the individual.