Keeping up with the Joneses, even weight

COVENTRY, England, July 25 (UPI) -- British, U.S. and Belgian researchers said people are subconsciously influenced by the weight of the people around them.

The researchers suggest that people -- without being aware of it -- try to keep their weight up there with the weight they observe in others.

The study, presented at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference in Cambridge, Mass., used data on 27,000 Europeans from 29 countries.

Researchers at the University of Warwick, Coventry, England; Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.; and the University of Leuven, in Belgium, found that nearly half of the women and less than one-third of the men feel overweight. The study found that at any weight level, those with university degrees feel much fatter than those with less education.

Women tended to be dissatisfied with their weight and their perceptions of overweight depended on the weight of other women of exactly the same age in their country. For men, being overweight tended not to be a significant issue if many men around them were as overweight as they were.

"A lot of research into obesity, which has emphasized sedentary lifestyles or human biology or fast-food, has missed the key point," Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick said in a statement.