Re: lololol!Fatties

Because of their size, we make assumptions that someone has been overeating, when they could have been restricting their food intake all week. It's unacceptable to attack someone on the grounds of their race or religion, but overweight people are fair game. One day, we'll look back at how people with obesity are treated now, and it will be seen as the dark ages."
As for the part heredity plays in weight gain, occasionally there's a single gene that's to blame, such as one that interferes with the production of leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite, says Lesley Campbell. "But mostly when people inherit a tendency to put on weight, it's an effect of multiple genes that influence things like how efficiently we store fat, how quickly we eat and how much we eat," she explains. "These are good genes because for most of human evolution they were what we needed for survival."

But the same genes that saved lives in long-ago famines can now make us sitting ducks for weight gain in a 21st-century culture that makes it easy to eat, but harder to burn off the kilojoules.

From a woman who'd been overweight herself, talked of strangers approaching her in the street, telling her she made them feel sick. "I had old ladies come up to me and take food out of my hands," she continued. "I was spat on. Since it became politically incorrect to deride the disabled, foreigners and women, fat people have became the last bastion of permissible ridicule."

"Genes account for about 50 per cent of the variables that affect our weight, but if you've inherited genes that make weight loss harder, that still leaves 50 per cent of hope," says Sainsbury-Salis. "It might be more difficult but it's not impossible."

Meanwhile, in laboratories around the world, the hunt goes on for ways to outsmart our survival "fat" genes and make weight loss easier. But while we need science to find a solution, says Lesley Campbell, we also need the community to find more understanding for people who live with being overweight. "