The Myth of the Obesity Gene Explored

It has been suggested that obesity is genetic, and many scientists are looking hard to find some faulty genes (and a profitable cure) that can be blamed for our increasingly expanding waistlines.

T. L. Cleave explained why the genetic idea doesn't make any sense in his book The Saccharine Disease: Conditions Caused by the Taking of Refined Carbohydrates Such as Sugar and White Flour.

Cleave pointed out that natural genetic diversity will cause different people to react in different ways when they're faced with an unnatural environmental threat. Whether or not an illness can truly be called 'genetic' depends on whether the body is built wrongly, or if it's being used wrongly. True genetic deformities are extremely rare.

Hereditary defects, like spina bifida or downs syndrome, are so rare they only happen a few times in each thousand births.

However, genetic diversity is just the normal, healthy variations that make us look and act differently from each other, both on the inside and the outside. Genetic diversity will also cause individuals to respond differently to new environmental threats.

For instance, in World War I, soldiers who hunkered down in foxholes were more likely to be shot and killed if they were taller than other soldiers in their troop. People do inherit their height from their parents, but in this situation, we would blame the bullets for a tall man's death, even if his tall father was also killed by a bullet in a previous war.

Tallness is not a genetic defect, but it may not be helpful in a time of war.

Overweight people's fat cells may develop insulin resistance faster, and this will make the environmental threat of refined carbohydrates more damaging to some people, just as tall men in those WW I foxholes were more easily hit by the flying bullets overhead.

That's why overweight people often eat less than thin people - there isn't anything wrong with their genes, there's something wrong with their food.

Refined carbs are a dangerous environmental threat that our bodies were simply not designed to eat - and that means that if you keep putting on weight no matter how hard you try to watch your calories, it really isn't your fault.

And there is a solution. Unlock your fat cells by moving back to a whole-foods diet.

Why Are We in the Middle of a Worldwide Obesity Epidemic Now? What Changed?

Whenever refined carbs are introduced to a culture, some of the people will get fat. However, in the 1960's and 70's, the worldwide obesity epidemic exploded. Two things happened at about that time:

The low-fat diet fad and the addition of high-fructose corn syrup to hundreds of popular processed foods and soft drinks.

Some polls now say that over half of our people are overweight. Looking for a genetic cause only delays a truly practical and useful response - we need to be looking for the true cause of this metabolic illness in the food we eat. As many scientists have pointed out, the primary cause is sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and white flour.

Ironically, the low-fat diet fad has made the obesity epidemic worse. Eating a low-fat diet can increase your cravings for carbohydrates, and most low-fat processed foods also include refined carbs in their ingredients in order to make the stuff taste better.

What's even worse, a diet that's low in both carbs and fats can cause the physical and psychological symptoms that are known to be associated with low-calorie diets - including weight gain.

That's why the low-fat diet craze is responsible, in part, for the startling increase in obesity and diabetes in the last 40 years. Sweetened soft drinks made with corn syrup and other sugars have also played their part in the obesity epidemic, especially among children. The problem is not in our genes, it's in our food.

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