There's No Right Answer

Scientific knowledge about how our bodies process food is changing rather rapidly.

- Vir Sanghvi

Do you know what makes us fat? Do you understand how to lose weight and, more importantly, how to keep it at bay after your diet is over?

No? Me too. I am as confused as you are.

But get this: even doctors don’t really know the answers to these questions. Normal doctors (even so called nutritionists) have no clue. And scientists − who are honest about the gaps in their knowledge − accept that the explanations change every day.

What we do know is this: some of us are sporty, athletic and well-coordinated; and some of us are born fat. The rest of us fall under some middle category and are neither sporty nor obese.

Why are some people lean and athletic? Intuitively, it seems obvious enough that part of this is hereditary. Lean or athletic people tend to have lean and sporty children. Fat people often have children with a tendency to put on weight.

Is genetics at work here? Possibly. Tall parents usually have tall children; short people have kids who are shorter than average. So why should body type and athleticism be the exceptions?

Scientists have now gone ahead and suggested that many of us may possess a fat gene. But opinions are divided on whether it would be worth asking people to check if they have this gene. Even if you did find you had such a gene, how would it help to know? you would still have to do the same things to lose weight.

Besides, research conducted in Australia (where people tend to be sportier and fitter than say, Americans) suggests that at least 50 per cent of all cases of obesity (in medical terms, obese just means overweight, not ‘disgustingly fat’ as it does in common parlance) are due to genetic factors. So how many people would you run gene tests on and to what purpose?