5 ms·

Honest question: What I don't get about the "obesity is genetic" is, why is the obesity rate climbing? Are obese people proliferating at a quicker pace than bef

by latch 16y ago

Honest question: What I don't get about the "obesity is genetic" is, why is the obesity rate climbing? Are obese people proliferating at a quicker pace than before? Are the genes responsible dominant?

jheriko 16y ago
Genetics are not the only cause...
rauljara 16y ago
Well, with any gene, it takes the proper environmental factors for it to be expressed. So while very few people would argue that height isn't largely genetic, most people also accept that it takes proper nutrition in order to grow tall. So even though height is genetic, and South and North Koreans largely share the same genetics, South Koreans are way taller than North Koreans. The genetic argument for obesity is that in areas of occasional famine, it made evolutionary sense to horde food in your gut, particularly fatty food. Until very recently in human history, there just wasn't that much fatty food for your average citizen to horde. Now there is, particularly because food corporations have realized over time that the fattier the food, the more of it they sell, and those previously advantageous genes are running amok. Not everyone has those genes because in places of plenty, those genes aren't that advantageous. I'd agree that that isn't an entirely convincing argument. But I do think it's part of the story.
- adrih 16y ago
  Can't we directly conclude from your argument that the obesity epidemy can be entirely solved by fixing the environment, which is probably easier than fixing the genes ? Heroin harms us because of our genetic makeup, yet we don't talk about how heroin-induced illness has genetic causes. We simply try to keep people away from heroin.
  - MichaelSalib 16y ago
    Not necessarily. The point is that given the current environment, some people become obese and others do not. The difference between the two groups may be partly due to genetics. And actually, we do talk about the genetic basis for opioid addiction. I recall one doctor suggesting that a small percentage of the population are born addicted to opioids from birth whereas most people will have greater difficulty developing opioid addiction.
    - jamesbritt 16y ago
      "And actually, we do talk about the genetic basis for opioid addiction." Plus, a major health issue with heroin is the shit product being sold. Attempts to restrict access makes it more dangerous to use.
  - barrkel 16y ago
    That would imply raising food prices specifically targeted at poorer people.
  - stoney 16y ago
    You could fix it by changing the environment - limited food rations, enforced exercise, etc. But the cost to society would probably outweigh the benefits.
- davidw 16y ago
  There are corporations in Europe too, but people here aren't as fat as in the US. Perhaps because, despite "the corporations", they do have a say in the matter and simply don't eat so much fatty garbage.
  - loewenskind 16y ago
    Well, the fact that much of what passes for food in the US wouldn't be legal in Europe has something to do with it as well.
    - davidw 16y ago
      You can get plenty of crap here in Italy if you want, and good food in the US, too. I don't really think that's the issue. People here are more discriminating about what they eat.
      - loewenskind 16y ago
        I don't think you realize just how far we go. :) Do you have products with more artificial flavoring than actual food? Use very large amounts of preservatives to make the food last several times longer than it should? Inject your cattle with steriods? Genetically alter crops to give them certain traits (e.g. larger)?
  - brazzy 16y ago
    Obesity is on the rise in much of Europe as well.
billswift 16y ago
It is a leap from the obvious "propensity for obesity is genetically influenced" to the excuse "obesity is genetically caused".
dagw 16y ago
When people say "obesity is genetic" they are generally talking about variations in metabolism. People are on the whole eating more food and more unhealthy food than before, and this is making the relative differences in people metabolism more apparent than it used to be.
cullenking 16y ago
My common reaction to people saying this is the simple fact that you do not get bigger if you consume less calories than you burn throughout a day. If you eat 2000 calories, and you burn 2000 calories then you do not gain weight, period. Yeah, some people burn calories at an easier/faster rate by just living (they have a fast metabolism), but it's a known fact that walking x miles will burn y calories, so you eat proportionally to your caloric expenditure. Any obese person that argues otherwise is ignoring physics, and is just not trying. My gut feeling (sorry!) is that these obese individuals playing the genetic card are confusing their hunger for their metabolism. It is shown that obese individuals get hungry sooner and that hunger is present longer even after eating (it's a hormone that causes hunger), but this is still preventable.
- DrSprout 16y ago
  It's a lot more complicated than that. The human body is not a simple engine with a fixed metabolism. Even if we switch to a more variable metabolism model, simply scaling your eating to your activity will not necessarily cause you to lose weight. The body first looks for equilibrium, and then when equilibrium is a problem it will start looking into stored energy. It's not just a question of "activity x burns y calories." Some of those calories are burnt in healing - our muscles strengthen by tearing, and then healing larger. You don't eat, your body may delay that maintenance, waiting until energy is available. So you haven't actually lost any weight - you've just prevented yourself from gaining weight, which is actually a bad thing, because that muscle would make you healthier.
  - cullenking 16y ago
    Wait, so if I burn 2000 calories in a day but only consume 1500 calories, I won't lose weight? I am not arguing that it's not as simple as the 500 calorie deficit going 100% towards fat reduction, but I don't see how it is possible to not lose weight like this. Weather or not the exercise builds muscle, it will reduce mass.
    - DrSprout 16y ago
      Naturally, if you consume 25% fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. However, you will be less healthy as a result. There's a very narrow band where you can actually lose weight in a healthy manner. It varies from person to person, and furthermore, you are making yourself weaker and more vulnerable to disease if you are eating less than your caloric requirements. So you're saying "you're fat, that's your problem, you should just eat less." The issue is that eating less causes its own problems, and for some people those can seriously outweigh the benefits of being thinner. For some people, their ability to metabolize fat is so retarded that what you suggest really isn't feasible. They will likely starve to death before they get rid of their fat. These people are, of course, rare, but the same issue exists in lesser values for other segments of the population.
cperciva 16y ago
Honest question: [...] Are obese people proliferating at a quicker pace than before? Honest answer: Yes. Overweight females are more fertile (IIRC fertility reaches a maximum at around 30 BMI) and are more likely to decide to have children due to societal factors (they are less likely to be employed and have lower mean household income). Until recently, the second factor did not exist (the societally accepted role of women was to bear children), and the first factor was limited by affluence -- bearing more children doesn't help you genetically if the extra children die of starvation. The above (horribly politically incorrect) comments notwithstanding, the environmental pressure in favour of "overweight" genes is a tiny fraction of what would be required to cause the observed surge in obesity over the observed timescale. We're looking at a change in environment, not a change in genetics.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Let me answer by analogy. When western Europeans showed up in the New World, they brought alcohol with them. Suddenly large percentages of the Native Americans were alcoholics. We know now that some people carry genes that process alcohol better than other people. We also know (and have known) that people who never drink never become alcoholics. Furthermore, we know that when an addictive substance is introduced to a organism there is a point past which the organism will continue to consume the substance at the expense of personal well-being, including up to death. That is, chronic physical addiction. These people were acting in an unchanged manner -- a normal manner -- but their environment changed. Should we have berated the Native Americans for being so susceptible to alcohol? Use societal and moral pressure to tell them what lousy choices they have made? Were the NA that lived before alcohol introduction "better" (well) than those who lived after it who were addicted (sick)? Before we knew about the dosing thing, were those people sick? Or now that we know that a the amount of lifetime exposure that triggers alcoholism in NAs is much less than others, could we call any particular experience with alcohol a bad decision? If I need 4 beers to become an alcoholic, and you need 40 thousand, yet neither of us know which number we have, is going out for a beer in college something society should tell us is bad? These are complex issues for which simple words that have thousands of years of baggage behind them like "disease" aren't going to work. My opinion is that if the individual makes decisions that he/she knows with greater than a 50% certainty will cause eventual long-term bodily harm, then the consequences are not a disease -- it's a personal choice. Even though it may have attributes of a disease. But I don't think the rising number of obese people is due to a huge number of people making informed choices with probable negative consequence. You eat a few high-carb meals in your teens and now subconsciously you are craving an insulin fix that makes you overeat. I eat a hundred times more high carb meals and I do not have the same condition. When we went out for fish and chips at 21, were either of us committing some sort of purposeful act to get fat? I don't think so, yet one of us now has a lifelong condition. So without any change in our behavior, environmental conditions contribute to changing the way our bodies and minds work. So yes, these people are sick -- in some sense of the word. (forgive the over-broad use of the carb model here. It is incidental to the argument) However society "dumbing down" illnesses to be everything from shyness to immaturity is also not going to work, because "illness" has this huge social stigma: you are broken, we have an obligation to fix you. Sorry, but I don't need to be fixed for everything I have that you might find as an illness. Some of these things I might enjoy, and some of these things I might feel a personal need to struggle with as a way of understanding the human condition. And I object at people telling me that I "should" do something or another in order to conform to some ever-tightening standard of normality. In addition, I am beginning to suspect that the eventual result here is a homogenized population -- an idea I find so abhorrent that I would rather give up medicine altogether as a species. (I understand this is a radical position) So in that sense, the word "sick" is not correct at all.

by latch 16y ago

jheriko 16y ago

Genetics are not the only cause...

rauljara 16y ago

Well, with any gene, it takes the proper environmental factors for it to be expressed. So while very few people would argue that height isn't largely genetic, most people also accept that it takes proper nutrition in order to grow tall. So even though height is genetic, and South and North Koreans largely share the same genetics, South Koreans are way taller than North Koreans. The genetic argument for obesity is that in areas of occasional famine, it made evolutionary sense to horde food in your gut, particularly fatty food. Until very recently in human history, there just wasn't that much fatty food for your average citizen to horde. Now there is, particularly because food corporations have realized over time that the fattier the food, the more of it they sell, and those previously advantageous genes are running amok. Not everyone has those genes because in places of plenty, those genes aren't that advantageous. I'd agree that that isn't an entirely convincing argument. But I do think it's part of the story.

adrih 16y ago
Can't we directly conclude from your argument that the obesity epidemy can be entirely solved by fixing the environment, which is probably easier than fixing the genes ? Heroin harms us because of our genetic makeup, yet we don't talk about how heroin-induced illness has genetic causes. We simply try to keep people away from heroin.
- MichaelSalib 16y ago
  Not necessarily. The point is that given the current environment, some people become obese and others do not. The difference between the two groups may be partly due to genetics. And actually, we do talk about the genetic basis for opioid addiction. I recall one doctor suggesting that a small percentage of the population are born addicted to opioids from birth whereas most people will have greater difficulty developing opioid addiction.
  - jamesbritt 16y ago
    "And actually, we do talk about the genetic basis for opioid addiction." Plus, a major health issue with heroin is the shit product being sold. Attempts to restrict access makes it more dangerous to use.
- barrkel 16y ago
  That would imply raising food prices specifically targeted at poorer people.
- stoney 16y ago
  You could fix it by changing the environment - limited food rations, enforced exercise, etc. But the cost to society would probably outweigh the benefits.
davidw 16y ago
There are corporations in Europe too, but people here aren't as fat as in the US. Perhaps because, despite "the corporations", they do have a say in the matter and simply don't eat so much fatty garbage.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  Well, the fact that much of what passes for food in the US wouldn't be legal in Europe has something to do with it as well.
  - davidw 16y ago
    You can get plenty of crap here in Italy if you want, and good food in the US, too. I don't really think that's the issue. People here are more discriminating about what they eat.
    - loewenskind 16y ago
      I don't think you realize just how far we go. :) Do you have products with more artificial flavoring than actual food? Use very large amounts of preservatives to make the food last several times longer than it should? Inject your cattle with steriods? Genetically alter crops to give them certain traits (e.g. larger)?
- brazzy 16y ago
  Obesity is on the rise in much of Europe as well.

billswift 16y ago

It is a leap from the obvious "propensity for obesity is genetically influenced" to the excuse "obesity is genetically caused".

dagw 16y ago

When people say "obesity is genetic" they are generally talking about variations in metabolism. People are on the whole eating more food and more unhealthy food than before, and this is making the relative differences in people metabolism more apparent than it used to be.

cullenking 16y ago

My common reaction to people saying this is the simple fact that you do not get bigger if you consume less calories than you burn throughout a day. If you eat 2000 calories, and you burn 2000 calories then you do not gain weight, period. Yeah, some people burn calories at an easier/faster rate by just living (they have a fast metabolism), but it's a known fact that walking x miles will burn y calories, so you eat proportionally to your caloric expenditure. Any obese person that argues otherwise is ignoring physics, and is just not trying. My gut feeling (sorry!) is that these obese individuals playing the genetic card are confusing their hunger for their metabolism. It is shown that obese individuals get hungry sooner and that hunger is present longer even after eating (it's a hormone that causes hunger), but this is still preventable.

DrSprout 16y ago
It's a lot more complicated than that. The human body is not a simple engine with a fixed metabolism. Even if we switch to a more variable metabolism model, simply scaling your eating to your activity will not necessarily cause you to lose weight. The body first looks for equilibrium, and then when equilibrium is a problem it will start looking into stored energy. It's not just a question of "activity x burns y calories." Some of those calories are burnt in healing - our muscles strengthen by tearing, and then healing larger. You don't eat, your body may delay that maintenance, waiting until energy is available. So you haven't actually lost any weight - you've just prevented yourself from gaining weight, which is actually a bad thing, because that muscle would make you healthier.
- cullenking 16y ago
  Wait, so if I burn 2000 calories in a day but only consume 1500 calories, I won't lose weight? I am not arguing that it's not as simple as the 500 calorie deficit going 100% towards fat reduction, but I don't see how it is possible to not lose weight like this. Weather or not the exercise builds muscle, it will reduce mass.
  - DrSprout 16y ago
    Naturally, if you consume 25% fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. However, you will be less healthy as a result. There's a very narrow band where you can actually lose weight in a healthy manner. It varies from person to person, and furthermore, you are making yourself weaker and more vulnerable to disease if you are eating less than your caloric requirements. So you're saying "you're fat, that's your problem, you should just eat less." The issue is that eating less causes its own problems, and for some people those can seriously outweigh the benefits of being thinner. For some people, their ability to metabolize fat is so retarded that what you suggest really isn't feasible. They will likely starve to death before they get rid of their fat. These people are, of course, rare, but the same issue exists in lesser values for other segments of the population.

cperciva 16y ago

Honest question: [...] Are obese people proliferating at a quicker pace than before? Honest answer: Yes. Overweight females are more fertile (IIRC fertility reaches a maximum at around 30 BMI) and are more likely to decide to have children due to societal factors (they are less likely to be employed and have lower mean household income). Until recently, the second factor did not exist (the societally accepted role of women was to bear children), and the first factor was limited by affluence -- bearing more children doesn't help you genetically if the extra children die of starvation. The above (horribly politically incorrect) comments notwithstanding, the environmental pressure in favour of "overweight" genes is a tiny fraction of what would be required to cause the observed surge in obesity over the observed timescale. We're looking at a change in environment, not a change in genetics.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

Let me answer by analogy. When western Europeans showed up in the New World, they brought alcohol with them. Suddenly large percentages of the Native Americans were alcoholics. We know now that some people carry genes that process alcohol better than other people. We also know (and have known) that people who never drink never become alcoholics. Furthermore, we know that when an addictive substance is introduced to a organism there is a point past which the organism will continue to consume the substance at the expense of personal well-being, including up to death. That is, chronic physical addiction. These people were acting in an unchanged manner -- a normal manner -- but their environment changed. Should we have berated the Native Americans for being so susceptible to alcohol? Use societal and moral pressure to tell them what lousy choices they have made? Were the NA that lived before alcohol introduction "better" (well) than those who lived after it who were addicted (sick)? Before we knew about the dosing thing, were those people sick? Or now that we know that a the amount of lifetime exposure that triggers alcoholism in NAs is much less than others, could we call any particular experience with alcohol a bad decision? If I need 4 beers to become an alcoholic, and you need 40 thousand, yet neither of us know which number we have, is going out for a beer in college something society should tell us is bad? These are complex issues for which simple words that have thousands of years of baggage behind them like "disease" aren't going to work. My opinion is that if the individual makes decisions that he/she knows with greater than a 50% certainty will cause eventual long-term bodily harm, then the consequences are not a disease -- it's a personal choice. Even though it may have attributes of a disease. But I don't think the rising number of obese people is due to a huge number of people making informed choices with probable negative consequence. You eat a few high-carb meals in your teens and now subconsciously you are craving an insulin fix that makes you overeat. I eat a hundred times more high carb meals and I do not have the same condition. When we went out for fish and chips at 21, were either of us committing some sort of purposeful act to get fat? I don't think so, yet one of us now has a lifelong condition. So without any change in our behavior, environmental conditions contribute to changing the way our bodies and minds work. So yes, these people are sick -- in some sense of the word. (forgive the over-broad use of the carb model here. It is incidental to the argument) However society "dumbing down" illnesses to be everything from shyness to immaturity is also not going to work, because "illness" has this huge social stigma: you are broken, we have an obligation to fix you. Sorry, but I don't need to be fixed for everything I have that you might find as an illness. Some of these things I might enjoy, and some of these things I might feel a personal need to struggle with as a way of understanding the human condition. And I object at people telling me that I "should" do something or another in order to conform to some ever-tightening standard of normality. In addition, I am beginning to suspect that the eventual result here is a homogenized population -- an idea I find so abhorrent that I would rather give up medicine altogether as a species. (I understand this is a radical position) So in that sense, the word "sick" is not correct at all.