What are we to make of the supposedly increasing obesity rate across Western nations? Is this a failure of measurement (e.g. standards for what count as “obesity” are dropping), has the Western diet changed our genetics, or something else altogether?
If it was mainly genetics, then I would think that the obesity rate would remain constant throughout time.
What are we to make of the supposedly increasing obesity rate across Western nations? [...]
If it was mainly genetics, then I would think that the obesity rate would remain constant throughout time.
Environmental changes over time may have shifted the entire distribution of people’s weights upwards without affecting the distribution’s variance. This would reconcile an environmentally-driven obesity rate increase with the NYT’s report that 70% of the variance is genetic.
The obvious cross comparison would be to look at populations distributions of weight and see if they share the same pattern shifted left or right based on the primary food source.
Hypothesis possibly reconciling link between impulse control and weight, strong heritability of both, resistance to experimental intervention, and society scale shifts in weight:
Body weight is largely determined by the ‘set point’ to which the body’s metabolism returns, hence resistance to intervention. This set point can be influenced through lifestyle, hence link to impulse control and changes across time/cultures. However this influence can only be exerted either a) during development and/or b) over longer time scales than are generally used in experiments.
This should be easy enough to test. Are there any relevant data on e.g. people raised in non-obesity ridden cultures and then introduced to one? Or on interventions with obese adolescents?l
I dunno, ask the OP. I was merely pointing out that in the event that obesity has a more or less significant hereditary/genetic component, the social stigma against it must be an even more horrible and cruel thing than most enlightened people would admit today.
(Consider, for example, just the fact that our attractiveness criteria appear to be almost entirely a “social construct”—otherwise it’d be hard to explain the enormity of variance; AFAIK the only human universal is a preference for facial symmetry in either gender. If society could just make certain traits that people are stuck with regardless of their will, and cannot really affect, fall within the norms of “beauty” in a generation or two… then all the “social justice”/”body positivity”/etc campaigns to do so might have a big potential leverage on many people’s mental health and happiness. So it must be in fact reasonable and ethical of activists to “police” everyday language for fat-shaming/body-negativity, devote resources and effort to press for better representation in media, etc.
Yet again I’m struck by just how rational—in intention and planning, at least—some odd-seeming “activist” stuff comes across as on close examination.)
A possible hypothesis is that the genes encode your set point weight given optimal nutrition, but if you don’t get adequate nutrition during childhood you don’t attain it. IIRC something similar is believed to apply to intelligence and height and explain the Flynn effect and the fact that young generations are taller than older ones.
What are we to make of the supposedly increasing obesity rate across Western nations? Is this a failure of measurement (e.g. standards for what count as “obesity” are dropping), has the Western diet changed our genetics, or something else altogether?
If it was mainly genetics, then I would think that the obesity rate would remain constant throughout time.
Environmental changes over time may have shifted the entire distribution of people’s weights upwards without affecting the distribution’s variance. This would reconcile an environmentally-driven obesity rate increase with the NYT’s report that 70% of the variance is genetic.
The obvious cross comparison would be to look at populations distributions of weight and see if they share the same pattern shifted left or right based on the primary food source.
Hypothesis possibly reconciling link between impulse control and weight, strong heritability of both, resistance to experimental intervention, and society scale shifts in weight:
Body weight is largely determined by the ‘set point’ to which the body’s metabolism returns, hence resistance to intervention. This set point can be influenced through lifestyle, hence link to impulse control and changes across time/cultures. However this influence can only be exerted either a) during development and/or b) over longer time scales than are generally used in experiments.
This should be easy enough to test. Are there any relevant data on e.g. people raised in non-obesity ridden cultures and then introduced to one? Or on interventions with obese adolescents?l
I dunno, ask the OP. I was merely pointing out that in the event that obesity has a more or less significant hereditary/genetic component, the social stigma against it must be an even more horrible and cruel thing than most enlightened people would admit today.
(Consider, for example, just the fact that our attractiveness criteria appear to be almost entirely a “social construct”—otherwise it’d be hard to explain the enormity of variance; AFAIK the only human universal is a preference for facial symmetry in either gender. If society could just make certain traits that people are stuck with regardless of their will, and cannot really affect, fall within the norms of “beauty” in a generation or two… then all the “social justice”/”body positivity”/etc campaigns to do so might have a big potential leverage on many people’s mental health and happiness. So it must be in fact reasonable and ethical of activists to “police” everyday language for fat-shaming/body-negativity, devote resources and effort to press for better representation in media, etc.
Yet again I’m struck by just how rational—in intention and planning, at least—some odd-seeming “activist” stuff comes across as on close examination.)
A possible hypothesis is that the genes encode your set point weight given optimal nutrition, but if you don’t get adequate nutrition during childhood you don’t attain it. IIRC something similar is believed to apply to intelligence and height and explain the Flynn effect and the fact that young generations are taller than older ones.
Flynn effect?
Sure. Fixed. Thanks.