Nature and Nurture Contribute to Overeating

Do you really want to trust alleged "info" on craving from the people who crave this:

      

Which is defined as this:

haggis

• noun (pl. same) a Scottish dish consisting of seasoned sheep’s or calf’s offal mixed with suet and oatmeal, boiled in a bag traditionally made from the animal’s stomach.

And is made like this?

"The likelihood of craving a couple of calorie-laden burgers and a cupcake or two instead of consuming a simple rice cake may be determined by a genetic mutation associated with obesity, found investigators here.

The effect of the mutation in a subset of children appears to involve control of both the amount of food consumed and the desire to consume dense, high calorie foods, researchers reported in the Dec. 11 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Children who carried a variant of rs9939609, a fat mass and obesity-associated (FTO) gene, consumed more food at test meals than controls (P=0.006) and were also more likely to choose a burger over a rice cake, according to Colin N.A. Palmer, Ph.D., of the University of Dundee's Biomedical Research Institute at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, and colleagues."

Two things are for sure:

1. Genetics is irrelevant. No matter what your genetics, you will never be able to lose weight unless you consume fewer Calories than you burn and you will never be able to gain weight unless you consume more Calories than you burn.

2. Once they have to invoke the A allele "variant of rs9939609" in order to conclude "the key to preventing obesity in people with this genotype, which occurred in 0.385% of the population studied, would be 'moderate and controlled restriction of energy intake,'" i.e., fewer Calories in than out, and which "accounts for only a small proportion of differences in BMI in the entire population," you'd have to be a complete idiot, like these researchers, to buy into this crap as a "cure" for overfatness.