"Fat" genes, some scientific perspectives

Just a quick comment on this. Modern people have somehow slipped into the erroneous belief that body fat is "dangerous" and "unhealthy." Excess weight may be unhealthy, but fat itself is not unhealthy and if it were not for body fat there would be no humans alive today.

Researchers have found two genes that influence the amount of fat an individual will retain, even if the individual diets strenuously. The second gene is even being called a "rogue gene," like it popped up just to cause trouble. Well, evolution and biology don't work that way. If there was no evolutionary or survival advantage to having a "rogue" gene, it would die out.

Fat exists to tide a human body over a time of diminished food supply. It's what keeps people from dropping dead after a few days without food. If one were able to go back and look at genetics of people who survived great famines, for example, I would not be surprised if a time traveling geneticist would discover that survivors had more, not less, of those "rogue fat genes."

There is a great danger in manipulating the body's survival devices, especially for vanity reasons, which, let's be honest, lies behind much of the "leaner is healthier" hand wringers. I'm not for grave obesity but that is a life style and food supply problem, not "rogue genes." The fattest people who retain fat would probably be the favored ones to survive a famine and pass on those "rogue genes" to their LUCKY children!

I urge both trend setters and researchers to stop being so short sighted regarding how life actually works and continues. Meddling with a gene that works to help humans survive during a famine is a really, really, really stupid idea. Research and understand it, but don't do what humans seem to be constantly doing, which is to "overcome" some "bad" part of the human body, thus medicating people (and by pissing it out, the whole environment) with drugs that work against survivability and true "natural health" rather than for it.

\facepalm/