Whether You are Fat or Thin is Mainly in Your Genes

By Filed under Science and Other News on March 9, 2011 with 8 comments

This is Professor Stephen O’Rahilly, Co-Director of the Institute of Metabolic Research, University of Cambridge:

We know for sure that a propensity for obesity – or its opposite, a propensity for leanness – is rooted in the genes. Some 70 percent of the variation between people in terms of their amount of body fat is explained by inherited differences that are built into our genetic make-up and passed from generation to generation.

Full article on weight and genetics.

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  1. Brian Williams. says:
    March 9, 2011 at 3:58 pm

    I know exactly how to explain my body fat … and it has nothing to do with genes.

  2. Joe Barnett says:
    March 9, 2011 at 4:02 pm

    So there was a gene to make people 800 pounds just waiting to be fed?

  3. Devon Herrick says:
    March 9, 2011 at 4:04 pm

    Genes may promote a tendency; but some people with a tendency to put on weight are not fat; while some people with a tendency to not put on weight are not thin. Whether or not you are fat or thin also has to do with what you do with your genes.

    Over the years I’ve known people (mainly women) who are thin and I have often seen them eating salads for lunch. I don’t believe their genes made them like salads more than a Jumbo Jack hamburger.

  4. Amanda M. says:
    March 9, 2011 at 4:08 pm

    “Obese people are significantly discriminated against. Research tracking the careers of large numbers of US teenagers has shown that those who are fat go on to earn substantially less as adults than those who are not fat, and that is even when factors such as education, parental income and scholastic aptitude are accounted for,” he said.

    What’s next, affirmative action for obese people?

  5. femi says:
    March 9, 2011 at 4:17 pm

    Anytime those of us in the Diaspora go to Africa to visit, you can always identify those of us that live in the United States; even in comparison to those that live in Western Europe…we are bigger, much bigger. In my opinion, we eat too much and seldom have the opportunity to burn it off. Period.

  6. Ermentrude says:
    March 9, 2011 at 4:35 pm

    I’d love to blame the genes, and I do come from big-boned German farm stock. However, the cause is more input than burn off, much as I’d like to blame nature. Just too much nurture.

  7. Virginia says:
    March 9, 2011 at 8:10 pm

    It is the 30% that gets us.

  8. Attilla the Pun says:
    March 10, 2011 at 9:23 am

    Or, in my case, in my jeans not genes.