Modeling the influence of social networks and environment on energy balance and obesity

The influence of social networks on the development of obesity has been demonstrated, and several models have been proposed. However, these models are limited since they consider obesity as a 'contagious' phenomenon that can be caught if most social contacts are deemed obese. Furthermore, social networks were proposed as a means to mitigate the obesity epidemic, but the interaction of social networks with environmental factors could not yet be explored as it was not accounted for in the current models. We propose a new model of obesity to face these limitations. In our model, individuals influence each other with respect to food intake and physical activity, which may lead to changes depending on the environment, and will impact energy balance and weight. We illustrate the potential of our model via two questions: could we focus on social networks and neglect environmental sources of influence, at least from a modelling viewpoint? Are some social structures less prone to be influenced by their environment? We performed a factorial analysis based on both synthetic and real-world social networks, and found that the environment was a key component behind changes in weight but its contribution was mitigated by structural properties of the population. Furthermore, the contribution of the environment was not dictated by macro-level properties (small-world and scale-free), which suggests that particular patterns of social ties at the micro-level are involved in making populations more resilient to change and less influenced by the environment. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.