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Current Nutrition Reports
Published in: Current Nutrition Reports 1/2020

01-03-2020 | Obesity | Maternal and Childhood Nutrition (AC Wood, Section Editor)

Social Influences on Obesity: Current Knowledge, Emerging Methods, and Directions for Future Research and Practice

Authors: Natalie R. Smith, Paul N. Zivich, Leah Frerichs

Published in: Current Nutrition Reports | Issue 1/2020

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Abstract

Purpose of Review

Individuals tend to be socially connected with those of similar weight and obesity status. To inform future research and intervention development, we reviewed recent literature examining social influences on weight with a focus on mechanisms of social influence, populations studied, and emerging analytical methods.

Recent Findings

Social networks appear to influence weight gain and weight loss. It remains unclear what underlying mechanisms (e.g., social norms, social comparison, behavioral modeling) drive this relationship. Stochastic actor-oriented modeling is an important method in the field, but other work has leveraged natural experiment or randomized designs to study social influence.

Summary

Future networks and obesity research should examine social influence mechanisms, focus on diverse populations across the life course, and carefully consider how to adequately control for competing factors of social selection and physical environments.
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Metadata
Title
Social Influences on Obesity: Current Knowledge, Emerging Methods, and Directions for Future Research and Practice
Authors
Natalie R. Smith
Paul N. Zivich
Leah Frerichs
Publication date
01-03-2020
Publisher
Springer US
Keywords
Obesity
Obesity
Published in
Current Nutrition Reports / Issue 1/2020
Electronic ISSN: 2161-3311
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13668-020-00302-8

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