Obesity and Genetics: A Public Health Perspective

The CDC’s website devoted the public health perspective page in February 2002 to obesity and genetics. For this month’s thought bullets, I share with you some of the quotes, statistics, and excerpts from the perspective page I found especially enlightening and intriguing.

• It is time to stop blaming the victim. People who struggle with their weight are pushing against thousands of years of evolution that has selected for storing energy as fat in times of plenty for use in times of scarcity. It is time to recognize their struggle, understand their challenges and support their need for lifelong efforts to achieve better health.
• "Conventional wisdom has it that anyone who really wants to become fit can do so. But when a few intrepid scientists began asking ... they found that fitness, like weight loss, has genetic underpinnings making it inherently much easier for some to get fit than it is for others." [Quote from The New York Times, February 12, 2002]
• Recent results of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999 indicate that an estimated 61% of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or more.
• "Today, in the developed world, the incidence of obesity is rising and there are now as many obese people in the world as there are people suffering from hunger." [Nature 404 (6778):631, April 6, 2000, Phillip Campbell and Ritu Dhand, editors]
• "As a nation, we need to respond as vigorously to this (obesity) epidemic as we do to an infectious disease epidemic...National efforts are needed to encourage physical activity and better nutrition and to conduct research to identify effective educational, behavioral, and environmental approaches to control and prevent obesity." [Jeffrey P. Koplan, Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]
• Genes are not destiny, but they are a significant factor in developing obesity. Some environmental variables manifest themselves only on certain genotypes. Public health efforts must dispel the notion that obesity represents an individual defect in behavior with no biological basis. Obesity is increasingly being viewed as a complicated interplay between genetics and environment.
• Health problems associated with obesity could reverse health gains achieved in the U.S. in recent decades. Increases in food portion sizes seems to have led to the "supersizing" of the American waistline.

Source:  Website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Public Health Perspective Series, February 2002, http://www.cdc.gov/genomics/info/perspectives/obesity.htm

Compiled by Betty Holmes, MS, RD