BBC2 Horizon. Why are we getting so fat?

Yes.. bit disappointing I thought.. various people's weight loss mentioned but no dietary info.. lots of mismatched bits of science but no real conclusions and I found the presenter a bit annoying.. all in all an hour not especially well spent.

catherinecherub said:

Did anyone watch the programme?

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Missed it.

Why are we getting fat?

Yes I watched it, some interesting facts. One aspect was the baby in the mothers womb. If the mother to be ate a lot of high sugar foods, a more unhealthy diet, the baby already had this in their gene make up and were prone to being overweight. So the presenter said lets go back further to the teenager and he went to Southampton where a class of teens tested dna from healthy and unhealthy diets in parents and also the dna in their children.
To stop the 'fat gene' the teenagers thought they should be looking at a healthy diet with exercise, not just for them selves but for their future children.
The presenter went to see a 37 st man, who was in the newspapers because he was asked to pay for two seats on a flight, in different aisle's !! and he talked about being fat as a child and comfort eating, then his wife of one year died and he and his child would just get take out foods.
Why are some twins different weights ? one female twin was 14 stone, the other was 8 stone.
Fecal matter was mentioned and a transfusion of this matter to a slim women, from her obese daughter ( to manage some medical condition, but I do not know what is was ?) made her put on a lot of weight in 2 years and the only real conclusion as to why this happened, was because it came from her obese daughter.
Watch it if you can, some of the programme, I did miss little bits, making tea and going to the loo. But I think more investigations in to why some things happen and a proper study would probably of been more helpful ( in a part 2 or 3 )

I thought it was an excellent programme..and interesting angle at least. More to do with obesity of course rather than diabetes, but if the conclusions from the "FTO" gene research is correct, it's certainly useful information. Bottom line, apparently, we all have this FTO gene (among many fat/nutrition related genes) to do with hour drive to eat and how the body "decides" at a genetic level to produce muscle or fat in certain ways. Those with more than one specific, relevant FTO gene (an extra copy or two) have systems which produce more fat than muscle and are driven to eat more - the more copies the more prone therefore to obesity. Though not mentioned directly on this programme, an implication would be that those driven to eat more will eat what is available in their environment (which often includes fast food outlets) and we all know shops are full of carbohydrates and are very limited on the stuff those of us on LCHF diets would like to find..therefore...more Type 2 diabetes. The "positive" this programme brought to light was that if people know they are predisposed to eat more, to gain weight for this reason (rather than through commonly perceived drivers such as greed, low will power, laziness etc etc) they will be more selective and careful, and those with the most copies of the gene actually appear to respond well and act appropriately. I'd say maybe much in the way those of us who realise that cutting carbs gives us more control of our blood sugar levels, these people take more control and feel better inside. Also, those with the most copies of the gene, whilst prone to obesity, are also those who benefit most from exercise, losing weight more easily through this than others! Look - the more awareness of all these food issues the better. We can argue all day about what caused the gene or why its there..but for me all of this just tells us all the more how certain foods need to be less than promoted to the hilt by the greedy companies producing them at all of our expense. I though it was very informative but maybe not so relevant for those purely looking for stuff directly concerned with diabetes. I'd like to see more of it...and liked the presenter/researcher's style.

pleinster said:

I thought it was an excellent programme..and interesting angle at least. More to do with obesity of course rather than diabetes, but if the conclusions from the "FTO" gene research is correct, it's certainly useful information. Bottom line, apparently, we all have this FTO gene (among many fat/nutrition related genes) to do with hour drive to eat and how the body "decides" at a genetic level to produce muscle or fat in certain ways. Those with more than one specific, relevant FTO gene (an extra copy or two) have systems which produce more fat than muscle and are driven to eat more - the more copies the more prone therefore to obesity. Though not mentioned directly on this programme, an implication would be that those driven to eat more will eat what is available in their environment (which often includes fast food outlets) and we all know shops are full of carbohydrates and are very limited on the stuff those of us on LCHF diets would like to find..therefore...more Type 2 diabetes. The "positive" this programme brought to light was that if people know they are predisposed to eat more, to gain weight for this reason (rather than through commonly perceived drivers such as greed, low will power, laziness etc etc) they will be more selective and careful, and those with the most copies of the gene actually appear to respond well and act appropriately. I'd say maybe much in the way those of us who realise that cutting carbs gives us more control of our blood sugar levels, these people take more control and feel better inside. Also, those with the most copies of the gene, whilst prone to obesity, are also those who benefit most from exercise, losing weight more easily through this than others! Look - the more awareness of all these food issues the better. We can argue all day about what caused the gene or why its there..but for me all of this just tells us all the more how certain foods need to be less than promoted to the hilt by the greedy companies producing them at all of our expense. I though it was very informative but maybe not so relevant for those purely looking for stuff directly concerned with diabetes. I'd like to see more of it...and liked the presenter/researcher's style.

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I enjoyed understanding the FTO gene and the 1 or 2 variant copies that heightens preDisposition towards obesity.

For me, the core of the thesis from his 8 years studying FTO was that those with 1 or 2 variants are as though they were dealt a bad hand in poker -it came from their parents and they can do nothing about the hand you are dealt BUT you can still win the game with a bad hand...

...it's tougher but you can still win.

He then presented the young Welsh man who was 23st at 15 and today (mid 20s I guess) looks like a young strippling of a man and yet he has the 2 variant FTO.

VERY INTERESTING, nature...personal responsibility response argument.


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I thought it was useful too. The coach driver who was T2 diabetes on several meds, had lost 10st after bariatric surgery and was no longer on meds, showed that weight loss can control diabetes. Though weight loss can be achieved by other means (and less costly to the NHS) than bariatric surgery

KevinPotts said:

I enjoyed understanding the FTO gene and the 1 or 2 variant copies that heightens preDisposition towards obesity.

For me, the core of the thesis from his 8 years studying FTO was that those with 1 or 2 variants are as though they were dealt a bad hand in poker -it came from their parents and they can do nothing about the hand you are dealt BUT you can still win the game with a bad hand...

...it's tougher but you can still win.

He then presented the young Welsh man who was 23st at 15 and today (mid 20s I guess) looks like a young strippling of a man and yet he has the 2 variant FTO.

VERY INTERESTING, nature...personal responsibility response argument.


Sent from my iPad using DCUK Forum mobile app

Click to expand...

I think I can hazard a guess as to my type.

KevinPotts said:

I enjoyed understanding the FTO gene and the 1 or 2 variant copies that heightens preDisposition towards obesity.

For me, the core of the thesis from his 8 years studying FTO was that those with 1 or 2 variants are as though they were dealt a bad hand in poker -it came from their parents and they can do nothing about the hand you are dealt BUT you can still win the game with a bad hand...

...it's tougher but you can still win.

He then presented the young Welsh man who was 23st at 15 and today (mid 20s I guess) looks like a young strippling of a man and yet he has the 2 variant FTO.

VERY INTERESTING, nature...personal responsibility response argument.


Sent from my iPad using DCUK Forum mobile app

Click to expand...

The thing that found strange was that he had a group of slimmers, about 20? in Colchester (interesting for me because I used to live there).. of that group he found 2 that had the gene variants so what about all the others? Is this another example of "science" being used to support a theory that doesn't in fact hold true? If he had said 90% of this group have the gene variants then I would have been far more convinced.

It's a survey of latest knowledge in the area.
One thing I learned is that there is a gene "FTO" that tends to make you fatter. However ... if you exercise it also enables you to lose more weight

Robinredbreast said:

Why are some twins different weights ? one female twin was 14 stone, the other was 8 stone.

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Could that be explained by epigenetics? Both twins had the gene but only one experienced environmental conditions to switch the gen on.

DavidGrahamJones said:

Could that be explained by epigenetics? Both twins had the gene but only one experienced environmental conditions to switch the gen on.

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The programme said it was because one lacked a 'lean' gut bacteria. I thought that was very interesting as I've been hearing a lot about good bacteria recently.

I liked the programme. It wasn't stupidly jokey or acting like viewers were too uneducated to understand much.

helensaramay said:

But it was not supposed to offer dietary advice: as the title suggests, it was WHY we are fat rather than WHAT to do about it. I found it interesting but not the best Horizon programme

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But if you are fat because you eat too much? Then lose 5 stone as some of the interviewees in the last part had? Not relevant..
I will watch it again on iPlayer to see if my memory is playing tricks but it felt very disjointed.

On the advice of several forum members I have been reading Dr. Jason Fung. He's most associated with intermittent fasting to reset your basal metabolism, but his new book the Obesity Code addresses several of the issues mentioned by the previous posts.
Why are we fat? Because too much insulin makes us fat , results in insulin resistance, and sets up a vicious cycle that perpetuates itself and causes greater obesity. He is a firm supporter of the LCHF diet. His Premise and research support of it make sense to me and this is fascinating reading. Among the scary things that he says, are that all artificial sweetener's including Stevia, although they do not increase our blood glucose levels, raise our insulin levels, again leading to insulin resistance. And here we thought the artificial sweeteners where the diabetics friend! And I was just learning to cook all those lovely recipes with sweeteners in the low-carb high-fat cookbook!
He also addresses the issues of how babies become fat due to their exposures to the mothers nutrition in the womb, and the nutrition of breast milk. And a million other things.
He also explains why all diets eventually fail, stall out, plateau out, Whatever you want to call it. And why the contestants on the biggest loser show all gained the weight they lost back, and more. And he says it wasn't their fault, And repeats it that theme throughout his book. His no blame attitude really encouraged me. And for the first time explain to me why my years of extreme dieting and calorie counting ultimately failed.

Mainly his premise is that the extreme dieting set the contestants' basal metabolisms so that their 'energy out' was 600 to 800 cal a day lower than it had been before the show. This was all measured at the time. Their basal metabolisms did not reset as was presupposed. So they could not help but gain it back. Fung uses intermittent fasting to help decrease insulin resistance and to reset the basal metabolism. And I've left out and simplified so many of his ideas, but he extended my thoughts on low-carb high-fat dieting hugely. His book is definitely a milestone on my path to understanding my diabetes. I think you have many for members who are using intermittent fasting, and probably have some great insights to offer. Dr. Fung is also online for free, but the book is much better written than the blog posts. Thank you to the forum writers who suggested looking at his ideas. It made a huge difference to my education!

catherinecherub said:

Tonight on BBC2 at 21.00.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07fys2y
Over 62 per cent of adults in the UK are currently overweight or obese and this figure is set to rise. A common attitude is that obese people should be ashamed - it is their fault, they have no will power and if they could just 'eat less and exercise more', the problem would soon be solved. Yet, despite millions of pounds being spent on this simple message, the UK is getting fatter every year.

Cambridge geneticist Dr Giles Yeo believes that for many obese people, simply eating less is a lot harder than you might think - and he is taking a road trip around the UK and America to uncover why. He meets the real people behind some of the more shocking newspaper headlines and, through their stories, reveals surprising truths which dispel commonly held myths about obesity. He gains access to scientists and doctors trialling cutting-edge techniques to tackle the crisis - from a 'miracle' hormone injection to a transfusion of faecal matter, and even learns a thing or two about his own size and relationship with food.

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Read Fat Chance by Dr Robert Lustig or, even further back: Pure, white and deadly by John Yudkin; and I think you will get most of the answers most people will need on the obesity pandemic and the increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes. It is NOT peoples fault, put the focus of responsibility where it belongs, the food industry, the USDA, and untold politicians in the world.