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OK, who isn't sick of counting calories?  Or, if you're a Weight Watcher's aficionado like I am, points? Now a new survey is saying not only are we what we eat , we're also who we know. Say what? Put simply, a new study by by Vanderbilt University researchers reveals new nuances in the links between a person’s weight and the socioeconomic status of the people close to them, and suggests that gender plays a significant role in that relationship, according to newswise.com. Though in the West high socioeconomic status is associated with slenderness, the relationship between status and weight is actually more nuanced than that. Using nationally representative data from the 2004 U.S. General Social Survey, Lijun Song, professor of sociology, and graduate students Philip Pettis and Bhumika PiyaSong analyzed the relationship between an individual’s weight as measured by a visual evaluation, the socioeconomic status of the people they’re close to as measured b...

My son weighed one ounce less than nine pounds when he was born, a week early.  The doctors took him at 39 weeks because they were afraid he'd be 10 or 11 pounds if he went full-term. Now a new study is saying that a higher birth weight can mean better performance in school. It's really a no-brainer, in the end. It’s no secret that low-birth-weight babies face significantly greater risks for certain health problems early on, such as respiratory distress or infection. Now, a new study from researchers at the University of Florida (UF) and Northwestern University shows that lower weights at birth also have an adverse effect on children’s performance in school, which is likely due to the early health struggles small babies often face. Studying birth and school records of almost 2 million children in Florida from 1992 to 2002, researchers found the higher the weight at birth, the better children performed on reading and math tests in school. I'm bragging, I admit,...