The Obesity Epidemic: When Biology and Culture Conspire Against Us

What We Eat or What We Are?

Tara Parker-Pope’s recent cover story in The New York Times Magazine, “The Fat Trap: Do You Have to be Superhuman to Lose Weight?” describes what is fast becoming canon: that modern culture has unmasked in our evolutionary biology a genetic propensity to defend against scarcity and starvation by retaining excess fat.

Research that documents weight plateaus for dieters, and biological differences between obese subjects and others is allowing us to assemble a picture of the human animal as metabolically hard-wired to conserve or regain weight -- especially after it has been reprogrammed by periods of obesity. Research also lends strong support to genetic differences in the degree to which individuals may be prone to obesity based on innate metabolism, food addictions, or other epigenetic factors.

Many frustrated dieters will find redemption in that thesis -- as, clearly, does Parker-Pope, whose article is unusually solipsistic for a card-carrying science writer. It is really a lamentation … which just goes to show how intractable and all-consuming this problem truly is for those of us who live in societies of plenty.

Dim Prospects for Cure

It turns out that when culture and biology team up, they have the potential to do great mischief together. Modern obesity and modern terrorism both demonstrate how aspects of our basic nature can be potentiated by forces of culture -- including both the Big Mac and the Internet -- to produce negative outcomes.