Figure 3. Evidence for disease-like spread of obesity.

Obesity behaves like a disease agent, infecting those in a susceptible ‘not obese’ state. The probability of transitioning from ‘not obese’ to ‘obese’ increases in the number of ‘obese’ contacts (A), and doesn't depend on the number of ‘not obese’ contacts (B). Conversely, the probability of recovering to the ‘not obese’ state does not depend on the number of ‘not obese’ contacts (D) or the ‘obese’ contacts (C)). Labels above points on plot are the number of observations averaged into that data point, and error bars are the standard error of the proportion.