FEATURE APPETITE
I am a geneticist, which, last time I checked, is a perfectly upstanding profession. I mean my mother-in-law still speaks to me, so that must be a good thing, right?
And yet, when I reveal that I study the genetics of body weight and that your genetics can be the driving cause of obesity, I become a bad person. I'm perceived as giving overweight or obese people – terms I don't use in a pejorative fashion – an excuse.
This has always been an interesting take for me. If I were studying something else, like the genetics of cancer, dementia, arthritis or any other disease, would I suddenly be giving the people who are suffering from those conditions an excuse? I'd hope not. Instead, I hope that people would understand that I'm trying to understand biology and mechanisms, and, shocking I know, I might even be trying to help some of them.
IT'S IN THE GENES
When we talk about body weight, it's all too often considered to be a matter of lifestyle’, a habit, a lack of willpower, a choice. The reality is that while rapid changes in our food environment and lifestyle have undoubtedly driven up the obesity figures worldwide, there are many people who are skinny and others who aren't. There's clearly a large variation in body weight, even in the
