Genetics, weight loss, and willpower

[likethewatch]

May 8, 2007
Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside
By GINA KOLATA

It was 1959. Jules Hirsch, a research physician at Rockefeller University, had gotten curious about weight loss in the obese. He was about to start a simple experiment that would change forever the way scientists think about fat.

Comments

[fuzzylobsters]

I agree, big bunches, that we are attempting to act on very incomplete knowledge. And, would argue that all the studies cited above drew conclusions based on incomplete knowledge - levels of physical activity, for one. Also, the _quality_ of the food available.

An interesting article in the NY Times Magazine recently claims that `you are what you grow' - that the farm bill is causing a surplus of corn and wheat, soybeans, meat. The generally crappy junk that's made out of those ingredients are the most affordable food, and these highly-processed foods have a higher caloree count than an equivilent amount monetary _or_ mass amount of, say, produce. Plus they are the least healthy sustinance available.

This article claims (on what basis it doesn't state, but it seems pretty likely) that "the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person’s wealth".

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22wwlnlede.t.html?ex=1178856000&en=e8d28c50b32fe39e&ei=5070

Of course, the passage that NJslutmuffin pasted above is just an exerpt from a book, and the author may not be claiming that weight is entirely genetic. But, let's look at the notion that weight is entirely genetic. Then why rising obesity rates, especially among poorer people? I'm guessing - a guess indeed - that a few people are hard-wired to be fat, in any situation other than starvation. They're probably the people who were studied in 1959 by Hirsch, when the overall population of the US was alot smaller.

A lot more people are probably _somewhat_ genetically inclined to be fat, in differing degrees. In the current marketplace, the foods that many people can afford, (or feel they can afford, if their priorities are elsewhere) may well be piling fat on.

Then there's the forbidden allure. "...obesity became what one social scientist called a moral panic". Well put! And `sin' can be soooo delicious...

[fuzzylobsters]

Oops, I wasn't clear - I mean the 1959 US populace was smaller _in girth_. :)

[likethewatch]

I just posted a link on wholefoods from Dr. Mercola on farm subsidies and their effect on food prices in the US that you might be interested in reading. It's such a startling reversal that poor people's food now makes you fat instead of some other, most wasted-looking kind of malnutrition, borne of good intentions: calories are good, right? That was the thinking 100 years ago. People were dying for lack of them.