I recently finished the Obesity Code and absolutely loved it! It’s helped immensely but there was one part that was confusing. In chapter 2, he talks about nature vs nurture and cites a study that was done on adult adoptees in Denmark. In it he says that “no relationship whatsoever was discovered between the weight of the adoptive parents and the adoptees” and that “approximately 70 percent of the variance in obesity is familial”. He later concludes that “most of the obesity epidemic materialized within a single generation. Our genes have not changed in that time span. How can we explain this seeming contradiction?”
I fully buy his argument of insulin being the main driver in gaining weight and obesity, but I’m struggling with this part. It comes off as contradictory to me. It also seems to go against what we know about other cultures adopting a western diet and obesity rates and disease going up. His entire premise revolves around the fact that we’re creating environments that are constantly stimulating insulin production which leads to insulin resistance…
Can somebody help explain this a bit further?
The idea is not that our genetics have changed so drastically (although some changes can occur over just one generation), but that the existing genetics in some people are hyperresponding to the changed environment. What, exactly, is happening is something we’ve barely begun to scratch.
I just read the Obesity Code, and it’s to do with the mother’s hormones. If your mother is fat and insulin-resistant while you’re in the womb, then you, too, will be insulin-resistant and inclined to get fat.