Animals Tell Us We Don’t Know it All About Obesity

From Your Weight Matters Magazine, Fall, 2012: Will Hignett and Ted Kyle remind us that while many people, including doctors and scientists, assume the causes of the obesity crisis are sedentary lifestyles, a polluted food environment, and a trend toward over-portioning, beliefs evolve as research expands into new areas and results accumulate over time.

Hignett and Kyle point out that ulcers, once commonly thought to be caused by stress, are now known to be caused by bacteria, and that until the 60s, very little was known about the causes of cancer. One piece of data that confounds common assumptions about the causes of obesity is that a number of studies done among various feral and domesticated animals show the rates of obesity increasing in those groups, too. Another piece of data is a study showing three times the amount of antibodies for an adenovirus known as Adv-36 in people with excess weight and obesity versus those without.

You can read the whole Your Weight Matters article here.