In a 2000 review in Nature, Barry Levin suggested that the "obesity epidemic" in the developed world might be more complicated than "increased food intake or decreased energy expenditure". Levin's review suggested that genetic predisposition towards obesity might spiral upward through generations in what he terms "metabolic imprinting."
Last summer, several studies attempted to demonstrate this link. Aagaard-Tillery et al (2008) found that macaques who ate a high fat diet during pregnancy tended to have heavier children, even if they themselves did not become obese. Waterland et al (2008), using mice, suggested that a genetic tendency towards obesity grows worse over successive generations. However, Lawlor et al (2008) looked at human data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children and found that the difference between maternal and paternal contributions to children's obesity was not significantly different, calling into question the maternal "overnutrition" theory.
Sociologists Kwan and Trautner (2009) call into question the entire framing of the "obesity epidemic" by pointing out the trend toward medicalization and pointing out that the epidemic can be framed as a "moral panic" which preferentially targets women.
I think we can agree that women are under more social pressure about their weight than men (e.g. 4/10/08, 1/22/07), and as previously discussed, women may be more susceptible to social pressure than men (e.g. 3/10/09, 2/26/09). The idea of a "moral panic" and the focus on maternal obesity brought this into a pretty sharp perspective for me this morning: my emotional reaction was that these studies were blaming mothers for their children's obesity. "Not only are you a failure as a woman for being fat, but you are a failure as a mother because you made your child fat." I'm finding myself surprisingly pissed off about it. The fact that Lawlor's study seems to be the only one looking at paternal genetic contributions to obesity is shocking, but probably shouldn't be.
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5 comments:
ukelele
2009-03-20 03:19 pm UTC
Yup, there is no limit to the things mothers can be blamed for in our culture. Grar.
(Also, the only one? Seriously? Because, I mean, in my mom's family everyone's skinny, and in my dad's family everyone's overweight (some very much so), and let me tell you, I have to go to heroic measures to be thin, and have never been able to sustain it. I want the plural of my anecdote, dammit!)
differenceblog.com
2009-03-22 01:10 pm UTC
@ukelele
So, I did spend a little time Friday trying to find a study looking at paternal contributions, but I had precious little luck. One of the reasons given (and of course I didn't note the source, so take this as theoretical) for the sparcity of paternal data is that father-child pairs are harder to recruit: fathers are more likely to leave or die.
But yeah, the only weight-paternal thing I found was a low birth weight study, not an adulthood obesity study.
Additionally: my mother's family tends to be overweight. My father's does not. They have 2 children who are heavy and two who aren't. *shrug*
domalicat
2009-03-22 02:13 am UTC
I find this very interesting, mostly because while genetics does play a role in metabolic rates and body type; our food source, food "smarts", lack of discipline, and blood type I believe is the real cause.
differenceblog.com
2009-03-22 01:11 pm UTC
@domalicat:
blood type? Now that's one I haven't heard about. Would you be willing/able to say how blood type contributes to obesity, and how it's different than genetic predisposition? Blood type is heritable (and now that i think about it, isn't it tied to the father's genes somehow? I can't believe I've never covered that).
[info]domalicat
2009-03-22 06:22 pm UTC
Blood type is genetic, both parents blood types are a factor in determining. Blood type is different than genetic predisposistion because certain blood types process certain food groups (meats, grains, chemical, etc) better than others, this site explains most of it www.dadamo.com. Type AB is the newest type; an addaptation to allow people to digest stuff like msg, high fructose corn syrup and other man made compounds; which otherwise mess up our bodies signals for full/hungry/etc. leading the average person to eat more than they need. Speaking of chemicals, many nutritionists believe msg and high fructose corn syrup are to blame for the obeisty epidemic
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