It is a rising concern that citizens all around the world no longer live a healthy lifestyle, including children. Many children do have a healthy lifestyle but there is still a large amount of children that are overweight. During research into this I found there are many reasons why a child may become obese that are self-caused. There are very rare conditions that can be inherited. But mainly the key causes for obesity is diet and exercise. I firstly researched into genetics, as many parents and professionals state that the rise in obesity in children could be down to genetics, better known as the FTO gene. Believed that if you carry this particular gene (FTO) and a specific nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) in the fat mass you are more likely to have a higher BMI. This was one of the first genes to be identified with obesity around the world; this was shown that the FTO gene was found in people that had a high BMI, regardless of age or gender.
Figure 1. (Martin E. Hess, Jens C. Brüning. 2014)
This graph highlights the effects of carrying the FTO gene, and the other associations this gene has including ADHD and depression. Finding that the main reason for a rise in an individuals weight can be due to an increased energy intake, impaired satiety response and increased food responsiveness. Whilst there is evidence that genes can contribute to the rise in obesity, this is still a rare gene to carry.
Leave a comment