thescientist | Talk about timing. As I write this
editorial introduction to our special issue on obesity research, a food
fight is going on in a hearing room at the US Congress. The point of
contention is the scientific validity of studies informing 2015’s
proposed Dietary Guidelines for Americans,
released every years since 1980. Fueling the harsh questioning of the
latest guidelines is the doubling of the global incidence of obesity
over the past 35 years. “In some ways, haven’t these guidelines somewhat
failed? . . . They don’t seem like they are accomplishing their
objective,” said Representative Glenn Thompson (R-PA) at the hearing.
One can hardly blame the skeptical questions of the pols. The stats are staggering. According to the World Health Organization,
in 2014 more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight, 600 million of
whom were obese. In 2013, 42 million children under the age of five were
overweight or obese.
Who’s to blame? Sedentary, overindulgent people, food manufacturers,
nutrition and obesity researchers focused on the wrong questions? Two
opinions in this issue, by Rudy Leibel (here) and Joseph Proietto (here),
put forth the idea that genes and lifestyle are both at fault, but are
only part of a complicated story of metabolic and hormonal dysfunction,
epigenetics, and environmental influences.
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