The Power of Friends
The quick answer: Your friends, and their friends, and their friends, not only shape you, they shape your body!
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Four centuries of history, in a paragraph
You’re gaining in wisdom when you understand how progress can be both beneficial and harmful. Here’s an instance: We were taught in grammar school how the arrival of European explorers to the New World was progress. But to the Inca, Maya, and Aztec civilizations it was a catastrophe. There is, however, a sort of balancing of accounts in life. The explorers introduced devastating diseases and other ills to the New World, but they brought back a fashionable addiction—tobacco. (The New World also made sugar affordable to all, but that’s another story.) There were two deadly outcomes: tobacco, in its different uses, was a factor in 19th century tuberculosis, and, via cigarettes, in 20th century cancer (and not just lung cancer).
There is a fascinating book, The Cigarette Century, The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America, that can help us understand how to win the food reformation. No nation has avoided the cigarette addiction. The rise and fall of this deadly pestilence in any nation can be divided into four stages, each covering several decades and totaling about a century. The phases:
- Cigarette smoking starts as an edgy fad, practiced mainly by young men. In the U.S. this occurred during WWI when cigarettes, quick and easy to use, fit the demands of a soldier’s day, and later the faster post-war life style.
- In this phase, smoking becomes fashionable and popular. Cigarettes use rises to 50-80% for men, with acceptance by young women a decade behind. For the U.S., use peaked in the post-WWII years. Lung cancer and emphysema take 3-4 decades to develop, so early users—on the surface—appear unaffected.
- This is the mature phase: Male use settles in around 40% with female use at 35%. Evidence of the addictiveness and harmfulness of cigarettes grows, but the tobacco corporations have the money and influence to confuse the issues and buy off national politicians. Public health workers and reformers begin to fight against cigarette use, but their victories are few.
- The end game: a growing body of truth about smoking morbidity and mortality can no longer be swept under the carpet. The turning point in the U.S. was the Surgeon General’s 1964 Report on Smoking and Health. With time, in growing numbers, thoughtful people begin to quit smoking, while local governments and businesses restrict smoking. Although the tobacco corporations are able to control Congress, they cannot control every city, county or business. In the end, the most powerful institutions (think of Congress, the FDA and USDA, or the American Cancer Society) are seen to have failed in their duty of care for the public; funny how reform comes from regular people. The U.S. is currently at the end of this phase; smoking has declined to 20%, persisting among the young and less-educated poor.
Cigarette smoking is an American invention, but the above scenario is playing out in every nation. The rise and fall of cigarettes gives us vital clues about how we can win the food reformation. The food-like junk offered by Food Inc. will have its fall, just as did cigarettes. This brings us to another recent book: Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Out Lives
Social Networks
You’ve heard that just six degrees of separation exist between us and anyone in the world? It’s hard to believe the world is so connected but it is, and that has a lot to do with how people are able to quit the addictive practice of smoking. Connected explains that though we can reach practically the whole world in six degrees of separation, we are mainly influenced by just three degrees—your friends, their friends, and the next layer of friends.
Think of your Christmas card list, the 50 or so people you care about the most. Then add in the 50 people on those people’s Christmas card list that most influence your friends; now we have 2500 people. Add to those, the next layer of Christmas card recipients (50 x 2500 = 125,000 people). Now throw out the duplicated names, the relatives you aren’t so connected to, and you still have a large body of people in the network that has shaped, and continues to shape, each of us.
In the book Connected, researchers went to the Framingham Study, a three-generation project that studied one small town to understand what causes heart disease. The study actually failed, in my view, but it did have a large body of information about habits like smoking, and also a list of people’s friends. When a computer diagram of the social network for Framingham people was constructed, it became apparent that people didn’t stop smoking all by themselves. They did it in the company, and with the support, of friends. Moreover, those friends who did not quit smoking tended to drift out of the network, relocating to smoking groups.
In the beginning, before smoking was undeniably linked to cancer, it didn’t matter who in a network smoked. But when it became unfashionable, it did matter and people who didn’t smoke drifted away from those who did, linking to new friends. So in the end there was a new dichotomy: nonsmokers and smokers.
The research also looked at overweight and obesity and found a similar pattern. People who grow obese tend to do it with their friends and those who don’t will tend to exit the old group. The rise of social media (think Facebook) brings new power to our network of friends—today we’re more connected than ever. Now think about the blogs you like to visit, like this one. Blogs add new branches to our social network, and they influence us.
Bottom line: The battle for food reformation can be won through social networks.
If you go back to nutrition books from the ‘20s and ‘30s as I have, you’ll find people arguing for much the same thing as today: less of sugar, meat, and processed foods; more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. WWII and the prosperity that followed derailed that movement, but it’s back in our face, driven by the frightening rise of overweight and chronic disease. In these battles, the major institutions often disappoint. They get fat, bureaucratic, and despite their power, timid. The power to fight comes, as always, from the people and people today have a powerful new advantage, social networks linked by the Internet. The food war that has lasted a century could be resolved in a decade, with the help of social networks of friends. Together we can learn how to eat well, reform the modern diet, reshape Food Inc., and save the world. That’s our humble goal.
Please comment; how do friends empower change in your life?
Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 8:35PM | by Skip Hellewell | 7 Comments | 4 References | Share Article | in healthy change | Email Article
Reader Comments (7)
Funny that today I read two post that said the same thing.
http://motherrunner.com/2011/11/tuesday-training-tip-surround-yourself-with-the-people-you-want-to-be-like/
I have some amazing friends and in my life. I am so grateful for how these women encourage and inspire me to do better. I love how I feel uplifted after a night out with them. I feel empowered to make the changes I need to because my friends have a gift of helping others feel loved and important. I can also say that when I am around people who could care less about living a healthy lifestyle, it rubs off on me and I come away with a more apathetic and negative attitude. I agree that one needs to have a social network of positive people that seek to uplift and improve. I also love that I can share my struggles with my family and friends, they can share their own and we are able to share ideas and plans on how to make our lives better.
I had dinner a week or two ago from some friends in the neighborhood. We got talking about the challenges of making dinner with a family but mostly finding recipes that work for us. I suggested creating a recipe club but noted that they should be healthy recipes and there seemed to be some interest. I'm hoping by the new year to have a group of friends that share the same food values we do to form a group which I think will greatly help us eat better. There's definitely power in numbers.
I completely agree with the "friends" idea! They influence and shape so much of a person's life. I have a degree in public health and I am working on my nursing degree and the Framington study has been referenced a lot throughout my education. It has always been praised. Why do you believe it has been a failure? I would love to have a post on this subject. Thank you for all that you do!
That's one of the things that is so interesting about health habits: how dependent they are on your social context. In China, smoking for men is pretty much required (it's a very important way to create bonds/meet people; when you meet someone for the first time, they always offer you a cigarette, and will not take no for an answer), so something like 75% of doctors smoke.
I feel like American eating habits are similar. Americans eat such massive portions, that would seem absolutely disgusting if we weren't so used to them: but because we are, people perceive that basket-sized 1200 calorie salad to be healthy (and feel virtuous about ordering it). This is one of the reasons I always lose weight when outside of the US.
I have noticed it's a lot easier to eat well when surrounded by people who actually understand nutrition: maybe a reason to teach it in schools?
I believe this so strongly. The culture you choose is so important. From restaurants to churches to your family. Our culture determines who we become.
Chelsea, you wondered why I considered the Framingham Study a failure (to learn the cause of heart disease) when you hear in class that it was a great success. A couple of observations:
1. Observational studies are useful for creating hypotheses that can be tested in classical RCTs, (randomized, controlled trials) but are less useful for making concrete conclusions.
2. Framingham made the incorrect conclusion that dietary fat and cholesterol caused heart disease and that lowering serum cholesterol by drugs or eating less fat and cholesterol would reduce heart disease. This led to an enormous business in cholesterol-lowering drugs of doubtful net benefit.
3. A later review of the Framingham study found that the cholesterol conclusion was unfounded but this was never published, it was quietly buried. This is scientific fraud.
4. The average person still thinks dietary and serum cholesterol is the problem, thus does not seriously engage in other preventive measure that are real, including diet, exercise, stress management, etc.
So, in the view of many, Framingham reached a wrong conclusion regarding the cause of heart disease, later buried the correct conclusion, and wasted a generation of time in learning to prevent heart disease. For a better discussion of this see: http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/cardiovascular-disease/framingham-follies/
Best to you,
Skip