Personal Responsibility

An article in today's Times sets forth scientific research into obesity that indicates being over weight is determined by your genes. The article is quite interesting and provides some useful insight into how the body works and how it responds to changes in eating habits and weight gains and losses, but it is clearly an example of science in a vacuum. The sample sizes may be large enough enough and may provide results that are consistent enough to be statistically significant, but the fact is that they simply don't account for the public health realities of obesity.

There is no doubt in my mind that genes play a large role in determining your body type, including your metabolism. In some areas that role is probably exclusive and in others it is probably much weaker. There are most likely people who are genetically predisposed to have extreme problems with obesity. But genetics cannot explain the demographic trends of obesity.

Genetics cannot account for the disproportionate effect that obesity has on the poor, or for the increase is obese children. These are cultural and societal problems, not just genetic ones.

Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside

"There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body’s metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/health/08fat.htm