Weight Gain Inlfuenced by Genes, Further Proof

Recent research maintains that weight gain, at least in-part, is influenced  by genetics. Factors like metabolism, infant appetite, major depression, and even ADHD have been discovered to have genetic determinates, which in-turn effect the likelihood that an individual will become obese. Other factors, such as some serious thyroid conditions, have even more obvious genetic drivers and have been long known to cause weight gain.

However, a new study goes a step forward, removing the middle man and directly linking genes to how much a person gains when eating fried foods.

According to the study, published in the British Medical Journal, eating fried food more than four time a week has twice as big an impact on weight gain for people exhibiting genes linked to a high-risk of obesity, compared to people with low-risk genetic information. In other words, the greater number of pro-obesity genes you carry, the larger you will become from regularly eating French fries and fried chicken.

Researchers from the Human Genomics Laboratory of Pennington Biomedical Research Center were able to determine this after analyzing data on more than 37,000 participants of three U.S. health trials. These men and women were tested for known genetic variants associated with obesity. Their fried food consumption over an extended period of time was also tracked using questionnaires. Lastly, each participant's body-mass-index (BMI) was recorded.

Following the analysis, researchers were able to determine that people with high genetic risk-of-obesity scores tended to have a BMI that was 1 unit higher in women and 0.7 units higher in men if they ate friend food frequently, compared to those at the same risk who ate less fried foods. However, the frequency of eating friend food among those with very little genetic risk was found to barely an effect on BMI at all.

According to the authors of the study, this indicates that genetics may be playing a huge role in determining how severely a person gains weight from leading an unhealthy diet.

The study was published in the British Medical Journal on March 19.