First pubished in 2009

YouTube, bad gifts, and the plague all have something in common: they spread radially within interconnected groups of people. Now you can add happiness to that list.

A new study shows that happiness is more than an individual experience, it’s a collective phenomenon. Happiness disperses within three degrees of social separation. In other words, you affect the emotional state of your friends, their friends, and even friends’ friends’ friends. And the ripple of emotion that you launch into your social sphere can last for nearly a year.

“Everyday interactions we have with other people are definitely contagious,” Professor Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School told NPR. But sex plays a surprising role in the transmission of emotion. Happiness spreads more readily through same sex relationships than through opposite sex relationships. Which means you may have more of an impact on your best friend’s mental state than her boyfriend does.

Christakis and co-author of the study, James Fowler of the University of California-San Diego also discovered that women are less happy than men. Happiness is directly linked to physical health. Happy people tend to avoid illness and live longer lives than unhappy people.

The implications of these findings are enormous. Women have the unique opportunity to influence the wellbeing of other women simply by concentrating on their own happiness. Instead of worrying about pleasing others, we should spend more time learning what pleases us, and then doing it.

During the season when everything seems to be contagious do everyone a favor and skip the re-gifting and sneezing. Instead, contribute to societal health by infecting everyone you know with happiness.

Watch the video about happiness in social networks on NPR.

The recession has exposed a weak link in the U.S. economy that’s rather surprising: our food system. As the unemployment rate rises, so does the number of people who face chronic hunger. Currently, 15% of the population is struggling to get enough to eat. Simultaneously, over 34% of Americans are obese, and weight-related medical bills cost the country around $147 billion per year. That’s 9% of all health care spending.

How is it possible to be dealing with hunger and obesity at the same time? The answer is that Americans are eating too much of the wrong foods, and not enough of the right foods. Hunger and obesity are opposite sides of the same issue: malnutrition.

As the LA Times reported this past Wednesday, a variety of political figures have stepped up to tackle the food issue. Michelle Obama recently launched Let’s Move!, a campaign to combat childhood obesity that focuses on eating healthful foods and exercising. But as politicians in Los Angeles are discovering, socio-economics affects accessibility to quality calories.

Our city is plagued with food deserts, large geographical areas where fresh food vendors don’t operate, which tend to engulf low-income neighborhoods. When residents make the effort to get to a grocery store or farmer’s market, they’re faced with skyrocketing food prices. It’s much easier, and often more economical, to eat at one of the many fast-food chains that always seem to find a way into food deserts. As the documentary “Super Size Me” proved, a fast-food diet is a road to self destruction.

I work for the Jewish Federation of Greater LA, and I’m proud to say that we recognized the emerging importance of food as a social and economic issue early on. We jumped in to help solve the problem by creating the Fed Up With Hunger initiative. And our efforts are beginning to be noticed in the broader community. The LA Times article mentioned cites our “Blueprint to End Hunger” as a one of the driving forces behind the move toward “better coordination of public agencies’ efforts to fight hunger.”

Read “Food Politics in L.A.: Hungry for Change” »

Want to get involved with Fed Up With Hunger? Join the Facebook Group!

With one-third of American adults estimated to be obese, dieting has become a national obsession. Although weight is partially determined by genetics, habits formed in childhood may hold the key to future health.

New research is shattering the popular notion that to lose weight you must lose fat cells. Ten percent of your fat cells die every year, but your body replaces them at an equal rate. Weight fluctuation in adults is instead a product of the amount of fat in each cell.

The study also confirmed that obese people have a higher number of fat cells that contain more fat and that the life cycle of these cells is twice as fast as those found in lean adults. The research “explains why it’s so difficult to lose weight and keep it off,” Dr. Kirsty Spalding, first author of the paper, told the BBC.

“Those fat cells aren’t going anywhere, and they’re crying out for more.” 

Obesity causes a variety of cardiovascular and metabolic health issues and costs the U.S. millions of dollars per year in health care. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made obesity one of its top public-health priorities, and it’s targeting its campaign at schools.

That’s because child obesity predicts adult obesity. The research explains why: fat cell production rises steadily as the body develops and then stabilizes. That means the number of fat cells you accumulate through adolescence will remain with you the rest of your life. As Gina Kolata reports on NYTimes.com, “One of the hard lessons of the past couple of decades has been that the body has redundant controls to maintain weight.”

It’s not impossible for people who suffer from obesity to lose weight; it’s just harder. Therefore, it’s imperative that healthy living practices, including a balanced diet and regular exercise, begin in childhood. 

Learn more about nutrition and physical fitness on the National Institutes of Health website.

The Industrial Revolution marked the birth of a new era in human history, an economic and social transformation driven by technology, manufacturing, and transportation. It sparked an age of innovation and invention and challenged the limits of human imagination. But at the same time, our young industrial society made reckless, self-serving choices without regard to the consequences to the environment.

And now, we have a mess on our hands. 

On February 2, 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of hundreds of scientists from around the world, announced that climate change is indisputable and poses a great threat to life on earth.

Breaking the Ice on Global Warming

Almost exactly one year after global warming became a universally accepted issue, a chunk of ice seven times the size of Manhattan dislodged from an Antarctic shelf and disintegrated into the ocean. 

Because global warming and cooling are linked to industrial economics, the issue is often made into a political tug-of-war that causes more contention than consensus. “We’re in a giant car heading toward a brick wall and everyone’s arguing over where they’re going to sit,” muses Canadian geneticist and environmentalist David Suzuki.

Everyone has a role to play in facing what U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has called the “defining challenge of our age.” It’s up to educators to spread the word. Is your school teaching climate change? If not, now is the time to start.

Four Ways to Grow Green

1) Avert political gridlock with ethics
Climate change is a human issue (not a political one) that will economically and socially affect people all over the globe.

Good citizens of the 21st century respect nature and have a responsibility to one another to maintain a clean, habitable environment. As denizens of a global village, we also have a duty to be fair when distributing and consuming limited natural resources.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair summed it up when he said, “The only society that works today is one founded on mutual respect, on a recognition that we have a responsibility collectively and individually to help each other on the basis of each other’s equal worth. A selfish society is a contradiction in terms.

2) Avoid talk of the apocalypse
“We have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics, and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced,” warns the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Most people these days are leery of media hype.

Argue the science behind global warming. Like the saying goes, people fear what they don’t understand. Stick with what we know. Touch on, but don’t dwell on, the hypothetical consequences of climate change. It’s important that people grasp the gravity of the situation, but scaring them won’t reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

3) Change the world
Even though scientists predict dire consequences if we continue along the trajectory of industrial “progress,” many are optimistic about the future. Glenn Albrecht, an Australian researcher and professor who studies the effects of climate change on the human psyche, offers this thought: “I’m not willing to give up on encouraging change towards sustainability even in the face of what looks like overwhelming negative forces.”

It’s an exciting time to be alive. We have a responsibility to ourselves and the rest of the world to lead the green movement. Empower yourself by learning ho to live sustainably, promoting eco-awareness, and getting involved in the political process. 

4) Take advantage of technology.
Because the U.S. government is just now accepting that human activity has contributed to climate change, it can be difficult

11th Hour Action.com
An extension of the documentary, The 11th Hour, which explores how we live, how we impact the earth’s ecosystems, and what we can do to change our course. The following pages offer specific ways students of all ages can get involved in the green movement:

The Center for Eco Literacy
Dedicated to education for sustainable living. 

The Cloud Institute for Sustainable Education
Inspires young people to think about their world, their place in it, and their ability to influence it. 

Roots & Shoots
Jane Goodall Institute’s program is a powerful, youth-driven, global network of more than 8,000 groups in almost 100 countries that encourages service-learning projects that promote care and concern for animals, the environment, and the human community. A special segment of the site is dedicated to educators. 

The Urban and Environmental Policy Institute
An umbrella group for community-based sustainability initiatives, education, and other programs.

Revolve or Evolve
Fewer than 300 years after the Industrial Revolution, modern civilization has arrived at the brink of its adolescence. Technology won’t disappear, but we have an opportunity to transcend our self-absorbed, industrial youth. Will we mature into a respectful, globally conscious, sustainable citizenry? Or will we continue to rebel against nature? Educators have the power to shape the future. You decide.Get Serious About Sustainability