Research Figures Out What Really Makes People Obese

An expert has claimed that if we are to make any progress in tackling the obesity crisis, we have to look again at what really makes us fat.

Gary Taubes, co-founder of the Nutrition Science Initiative, argued that our understanding of the cause of obesity may be incorrect, and that rectifying this misconception is "absolutely critical" to future progress.

Malnutrition to Obesity - The Big Leap
Obesity is the root cause of problems like diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis and gall bladder disease. A serious look at our strategies is needed to tackle this fast growing epidemic.

"What we want to know," he said, "is what causes us to gain weight, not whether weight loss can be induced under different conditions of semi-starvation."

The history of obesity research is a history of two competing hypotheses of energy balance and endocrinology, Taubes wrote in an article published in this week's BMJ.

Since the 1950s, conventional wisdom on obesity has been that it is caused by a positive energy balance - in other words we get fat because we overeat. The alternative hypothesis - that obesity is a hormonal or regulatory disorder - was dismissed after the second world war as being unworthy of serious attention.

Obesity - Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis, Complications, Treatment
Obesity is a condition where there is excess accumulation of body fat which poses a risk to the health of the individual. It can affect children and adults.

But Taubes believes that the wrong hypothesis - energy balance - won out and that it is this hypothesis, along with substandard science, that has fuelled the obesity crisis and the related chronic diseases.

He argued that attempts to blame the obesity epidemics worldwide on increased availability of calories "typically ignore the fact that these increases are largely carbohydrates" and, as such, these observations "shed no light on whether it's total calories to blame or the carbohydrate calories."

Mantra to Prevent Childhood Obesity � Vigorous Physical Activity
Being physically very active is the mantra to prevent pediatric obesity rather than concentrating efforts at restricting energy consumption.

Nor do they shed light on the more fundamental question of whether people or populations get fat "because they're eating more, or eat more because the macronutrient composition of their diets is promoting fat accumulation in effect, driving an increase in appetite."

Taubes also points to "substandard" research that is "incapable of answering the question of what causes obesity."

Carbohydrates and Its Role in Obesity
Over 1 billion people world-wide are obese thus affecting their health due to their nutrition and lifestyle. 3.9% of India’s population is obese! Know more about obesity and its prevention.

As a result, he has co-founded the Nutrition Science Initiative, a not-for-profit organisation to "fund and facilitate rigorously well controlled experimental trials, carried out by independent, sceptical researchers."

Our hope, he said, is that these experiments will answer definitively the question of what causes obesity, and help us finally make meaningful progress against it.

If we are to make progress in the struggle against obesity and its related chronic diseases, he believes we must accept the existence of alternative hypotheses of obesity, refuse to accept substandard science, and find the willingness and the resources to do better.

Source-ANI