| Happy Sunday, everyone. Personally, I don't think obesity is the moral failing that we're led to believe it is. Let me explain. Someone drew my attention to a 2018 study that found the major reason why people are obese or overweight in affluent countires is genetic differences in brain and central nervous system function. Not intelligence, but rather appetite, satiety, and hunger signaling. While there is definitely a major genetic component—the body runs on genes—that seems like an odd explanation for the massive and recent rise in obesity and overweight. Look at old photos from 50 years ago and almost no one is overweight. Go back 100 years. All thin, with a few rare exceptions. Did the genes shift that fast? Have these "BMI genes" undergone rapid selection in the last few generations? If anything, the environment should have selected againstthese genes. Adiposity makes people less healthy and less fertile. On a long enough timeline, you'd think it would select for the genes that oppose high BMIs and elevated body fat. We are not on a long enough timeline yet. The genes haven't been selected for or against; they just are. I'd be willing to bet that the distribution of "BMI genes" hasn't changed much from 100 years ago. Yet here we are, fat and getting fatter as a society "because of genes." So it's not feasible that the frequency of the maladaptive genes has increased. The genetic landscape of a population doesn't change that quickly in 50 years, especially in the direction of maladaptation. Something in the environment has changed. And the same genes that have more or less been around in the same proportion are reacting to that environmental shift.
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Maybe it's the carbs. Or the seed oils. Or the calories. Or the overly delicious food engineered by scientists to be irresistible and habit-forming. It's a thousand things, most of which you've heard me discuss. But it's important to take that 30 thousand foot view whenever people use genes to explain a recent problem. Genes are involved, but why are these genes suddenly relevant? What's going on? What's changed? You may not find the definite answer, but you'll be closer to the truth than the person who says "genes" and stops. What "genetic" problems do you suspect are actually problems of environmental mismatch or maladaptation? Why can't some people, even those who profess to be students of science and evolution, grasp this concept? Let me know what you think in the comment section of this week's New and Noteworthy. | 
