Obesity not caused by genetics?

Obesity is likely not a disease naturally caused by genetics—our genes have largely stayed the same over the past forty years, but obesity has skyrocketed.

This is because we are overeating poor-quality foods and exercising less. As Claude Bouchard of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center puts it, the spike in obesity is “more likely due to a changing social and physical environment that encourages consumption and discourages expenditure of energy, behaviors that are poorly compatible with the genome that we have inherited.”

Bouchard, in another article published in the International Journal of Obesity, notes that the “genetic predisposition” to gain severe amounts of weight appears to be prevalent across all human populations on Earth, but that some of this predisposition could be linked to epigenetic (environmental impact on a genome) events in fetal life or early infancy, or even viruses at these times. In other words, the genetic predisposition of obesity in some may not appear naturally in fetal life, but it may appear in the child through environmental effects via the mother.

Lu Qui and Young Ae Cho of Harvard Medical School note that adequate exercise and a proper diet will likely diminish the phenotype (observable characteristics) of obesity, and tamper certain genes that cause obesity, namely the FTO gene, even if the genetic predisposition is there.

It is a nurture vs. nature scenario: the nature of all human populations includes the genetic predisposition for obesity, yet one must nurture its activation in order to be obese. Therefore, and now relating to plastics, the prevention of activities, such as coming in contact with BPA or phthalates, both obesogens (chemicals that cause metabolic and endocrine changes, making it harder to lose weight) common in plastics, that prompt the phenotypic expression of obesity are necessary for preventing obesity.