Comments on: Obesity is 77% Heritable

By: What You Pay For

What You Pay For — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 23:06:33 +0000

[...] they depend on the fact that “everyone knows” how awful it is to be fat, and that weight is a choice, and that the pursuit of ceasing to exist – becoming a size zero – is an occupation [...]

By: On Being Pro-Liberty and Anti-Dieting « Big Liberty

On Being Pro-Liberty and Anti-Dieting « Big Liberty — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:17:56 +0000

[...] people play the part of folkdevil. The evidence suggests that the vast majority of fat people are programmed to be some degree of fat. Many pro-interventionist, anti-fat studies are conducted in a [...]

By: Cenire

Cenire — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:27:44 +0000

Also, Marie, I really don’t think you can compare Prader-Willi Syndrome with a person who is obese. Not all PWSs are obese, and not all obese people have similar characteristics as PWS’s, too. A pet peeve of mine is the automatic assumption that PWS = the Obese Disability…. and it isn’t.

By: bigliberty

bigliberty — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:27:18 +0000

^Great point. See my favorite post of all time, The Tall Epidemic.

By: goodbyemyboy

goodbyemyboy — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:59:17 +0000

People accept that height is primarily genetic, and studies have suggested that taller people have a higher risk of some cancers. But no one is telling tall people that, while there is some genetic predisposition to growing taller, it’s just their lot in life to work harder to remain short than the rest of us do. For their health, of course.

But that certainly couldn’t be because there’s no deep-seated societal prejudice against tall people, or anything.

By: bigliberty

bigliberty — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:48:17 +0000

Oh yes, and I’m well aware of your grudging acceptance that there is a genetic ‘predisposition,’ but that’s that is no good excuse not to try to be thin, and that fatter people by nature just have to work harder.

How hard is hard enough, by the way? Should we all just sign up for camps so we can starve and work and starve all day, under some sort of Supreme Thin enforcer? Because I guarantee you that many fat people cannot be permanently thin unless they were literally slaving/forced to do so at the extreme bounds of a human’s physical limits.

Diets, lifestyle changes, and any reasonable “change” doesn’t make a fat person permanently thin. The only reliable way to “prevent” fatness is to disallow individuals to bring children predisposed to fatness to term. Or to starve living children and adults until they either die or go crazy from starvation’s mental anguish — thin at last!

Certainly it is more “healthy” to remain fat, even if the misinformation you believe and promulgate about fat people and adiposity is true, given those alternatives. But it’s easier just to blame people for how they were born and crack the whip of guilt and shame, isn’t it? What makes you better than every other self-righteous ignoramous out there? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Crack your whip elsewhere, dammit. Unlike most other groups out there, we don’t buy your superiority-via-the-cult-of-thin-sacrifice bullshit. And we don’t tolerate it for that long. Now piss off.

By: bigliberty

bigliberty — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:34:19 +0000

Hi Marie,

As soon as you come out with your own study that obesity is not 77% heritable, or can provide a reasoned argument why the study linked here (and there are several older studies which have about the same results), I’d watch out when making statements like “obesity is 100% preventable.”

Of course, I have the sneaking suspicion you only wanted to post here to blogwhore. I’d watch out doing that on FA blogs in general, though. Most probably won’t publish such a hilariously contradictory, unscientific, and lazily thought-out comment. No matter how many foundations, organizations, and other health-related companies to which you link!

Critical thinkers, please observe the delicious irony of an opinion posted after a non-opinion blog post. Those damn scientific results sure are stubborn things…are you sure I can’t just wish them away with my Magical Thin Thinking and Desire to Convert Bad Fatties to Good Thinness?

By: marie dufour

marie dufour — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:03:03 +0000

Obesity is 100% preventable (aside from some rare syndrome, like Prader-Willy). No doubt that some genetic predisposition makes it harder for some to remain within healthy weight. But presenting the genetic bias as an excuse to make obesity acceptable is not only false, it is also irresponsible. Some of us will never be lean, some of us have to work very very hard at being well, and it’s totally unfair, I agree. Yet, healthy eating habits and maintaining a healthy weight ARE achievable, at a price: you can work at it, or you can pay for the consequences (with your healthcare dollars or with your health and life).

By: Back from Vaction and some link-love « I AM in shape. ROUND is a shape.

Back from Vaction and some link-love « I AM in shape. ROUND is a shape. — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:10:43 +0000

[...] Big Liberty pointed out a fairly recent (Feb 2008) study which linked obesity to genetics. 77% linked. While I have to shake my head at the study’s intro which states unequivocally that “The dramatic rise in childhood obesity in the past 15 y (1) is clearly due to changes in the environment, because genes have not altered.”; the discussion conclusions are more in-line with the study’s findings in that: “The results in the present study are broadly comparable to findings from earlier cohorts of young adults, which indicates that the balance of genetic and environmental effects is much the same as that before the external environment became so obesogenic. Therefore, although contemporary environments have made today’s children fatter than were children 20 y ago, the primary explanation for variations within the population, then and now, is genetic differences between individual children.” (Emphasis is mine) [...]

By: the fat nutritionist

the fat nutritionist — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:38:28 +0000

Ooooh, good find, thanks. I’m attempting to create a big list of articles just like this to add to my sidebar.