Hot Topic (11/27): Is Obesity Genetic?

[Cafe GroupAdmin]

The Real Cause of Obesity

It's not gluttony. It's genetics. Why our moralizing misses the point.

 

Despite receiving a MacArthur genius award for her work in Alabama "forging an inspiring model of compassionate and effective medical care in one of the most underserved regions of the United States," Regina Benjamin's qualifications to be surgeon general have been questioned. Why? She is overweight. "It tends to undermine her credibility," Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, said in an interview with ABC News. "I do think at a time when a lot of public-health concern is about the national epidemic of obesity, having a surgeon general who is noticeably overweight raises questions in people's minds."

 

It is not enough, it seems, that the obese must suffer the medical consequences of their weight, consequences that include diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, and that cause nearly 300,000 deaths in the United States each year. They must also suffer the opprobrium heaped on them by people like Angell or Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who advised the obese to "Look in the mirror because you are the one to blame." In our society, perhaps no group is more stigmatized than the obese.

 The abuse is nothing new, of course. Four hundred years ago, Shakespeare had Prince Hal hurl a barrage of insults at Falstaff, calling him "fat-witted," "horseback-breaker," and a "huge hill of flesh." But Shakespeare had an excuse. In his time essentially nothing was known about the real reasons that people are fat. Today we have no such excuse. Modern medical science has gone a long way toward explaining the causes of obesity, and the bottom line is clear: obesity is not a personal choice. The obese are so primarily as a result of their genes.  

Genetic studies have shown that the particular set of weight-regulating genes that a person has is by far the most important factor in determining how much that person will weigh. The heritability of obesity—a measure of how much obesity is due to genes versus other factors—is about the same as the heritability of height. It's even greater than that for many conditions that people accept as having a genetic basis, including heart disease, breast cancer, and schizophrenia. As nutrition has improved over the past 200 years, Americans have gotten much taller on average, but it is still the genes that determine who is tall or short today. The same is true for weight. Although our high-calorie, sedentary lifestyle contributes to the approximately 10-pound average weight gain of Americans compared to the recent past, some people are more severely affected by this lifestyle than others. That's because they have inherited genes that increase their predisposition for accumulating body fat. Our modern lifestyle is thus a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the high prevalence of obesity in our population.

 

 

 

 Over the past decade, scientists have identified many of the genes that regulate body weight and have proved that in some instances, different variants of these genes can lead a person to be fat or thin. These genes underlie a weight-regulating system that is remarkably precise. The average person takes in a million or more calories per year, maintaining within a narrow range over the course of decades. This implies that the body balances calorie consumption with calorie expenditure, and does with a precision greater than 99.5 percent. Even the most vigilant calorie counter couldn't compete, if for no other reason than that the calorie counts on food labels are often off by 10 percent or more.

Your Thoughts?

[EireLass]

I believe it's more lifestyle than genetics. And if one claims genetics it tends to "okay" a lifestyle that is not of optimal health. I am supposedly pre-disposed to certain things....Hmmm. I don't have them. Could it be that forever I've adopted a different lifestyle than that of my siblings?  

[rfourangels]

Quoting EireLass:

I believe it's more lifestyle than genetics. And if one claims genetics it tends to "okay" a lifestyle that is not of optimal health. I am supposedly pre-disposed to certain things....Hmmm. I don't have them. Could it be that forever I've adopted a different lifestyle than that of my siblings?  

Absolutely.

I do think that we can be "pre-disposed" to certain things, but it is our lifestyle choices that makes the difference, with everything.

[Mergath]

I think that there has to be a genetic predisposition towards obesity.  For example, my family has no history of obesity.  We're not skinny supermodels, mind- I'm certainly at the curvy side of average- but we aren't obese, either.  And I've gone through periods of time when I lived on large quantities of pizza and other junk food, and my weight never fluctuated by more than a few pounds.  I had friends in college who lived on the exact same diet and ended up gaining a hundred pounds.  I'm not trying to brag about the awesomeness of my genes- I've got quite a few stinkers in my collection, too- but by all rights, I should have weighed two fifty when I finished school.

Of course, those with a predisposition towards obesity don't have to end up overweight.  They just have to work much harder to stay at a healthy weight, unfortunately.  

[spamica]

It's obviously both! If it was just genetics there would be no obesity "epidemic" , this wouldn't be the fattest generation EVER and Americans would not be fatter than any other nation. 

 If it were just lifestyle then I would have been an obese child because I had 24/7 access to unlimited soda, potato chips, cookies, snack cakes, sugary cereal and candy but yet I got made fun of at school for being too skinny.

[Talee]

Quoting Mergath:

I think that there has to be a genetic predisposition towards obesity.  For example, my family has no history of obesity.  We're not skinny supermodels, mind- I'm certainly at the curvy side of average- but we aren't obese, either.  And I've gone through periods of time when I lived on large quantities of pizza and other junk food, and my weight never fluctuated by more than a few pounds.  I had friends in college who lived on the exact same diet and ended up gaining a hundred pounds.  I'm not trying to brag about the awesomeness of my genes- I've got quite a few stinkers in my collection, too- but by all rights, I should have weighed two fifty when I finished school.

Of course, those with a predisposition towards obesity don't have to end up overweight.  They just have to work much harder to stay at a healthy weight, unfortunately.  

 

This.

[tericared]

Quoting Talee:

Quoting Mergath:

I think that there has to be a genetic predisposition towards obesity.  For example, my family has no history of obesity.  We're not skinny supermodels, mind- I'm certainly at the curvy side of average- but we aren't obese, either.  And I've gone through periods of time when I lived on large quantities of pizza and other junk food, and my weight never fluctuated by more than a few pounds.  I had friends in college who lived on the exact same diet and ended up gaining a hundred pounds.  I'm not trying to brag about the awesomeness of my genes- I've got quite a few stinkers in my collection, too- but by all rights, I should have weighed two fifty when I finished school.

Of course, those with a predisposition towards obesity don't have to end up overweight.  They just have to work much harder to stay at a healthy weight, unfortunately.  

 

 

This.

I agree

[winkblinknod]

I believe it's gluttony,  it's the lifestyle you live.  Eating habits, your metabolisim, etc.

[TheMom1994]

Sorry, just sounds like a cop-out to me. I have a good friend who is very obese. Her mother is even larger and most of the family tends to be large. They also refuse to exercise, drink and eat to success, have lousy sleeping habits, etc. etc. etc. If they exercised, ate properly and took care of themselves I think they'd be just as likely to not be obese as any other family. They would be "large" as they come of big-boned stock but not obese.

 

[resamerie]

I think it's both. I have an Aunt that is obese and her 2 natural children are/were also, (I say were because all 3 had gastro-bypass and my cousin died a year later because he would still overeat tremendously). She also has 2 adopted children that were around the same age. They were always thin even though the same amount and types of food were available to them.

 I think that when your ped. tells you at age 5 that your child is morbidly obese, it is time to start putting them on some sort of regime no matter what the cause. It's not like at that age they can just make their own money and go buy all the junk they want. Someone's bringing it into the house.

 It's a combo of the both.

[la_bella_vita]

I think some people are genetically predisposed to being obese. But for the most part I think it's lifestyle.