Obesity isn’t caused by overeating, and it isn’t fixed by restricting one’s diet. It appears to have multiple causes. There is no eating plan, whether one calls it a “diet” or “a change in lifestyle” that results in significant permanent weight loss. In fact, of all those people who go on a diet this year, 95% will weigh more four years later than when they began the diet.

Researchers are increasingly agreed that body fat is actually an organ that helps the individual deal with stress. If you are overstressed, the organ enlarges, just as the heart or liver enlarges when they are overworked. There’s no adjustment in the diet that will reduce the size of an enlarged heart or liver, either, so it’s not surprising that there’s no way to reduce the size of the fat organ.

About 2% of the population will have permanent weight loss of more than 40 pounds in any given year. That 2% occurs whether you’re trying to diet or not trying to diet, and whether one finds the weight loss desirable or not.

Diabetes is a symptom – high blood sugar – rather than a single disease; we know, for instance, that there are at least 4 diseases that all get called MODY. Lots of things cause high blood sugar. If it’s not caused by something else we have a name for, we call it diabetes.

The largest single cause of diabetes appears to be genetic, not in the 46 chromosomes that are determined sexually, but in the mitochondrial DNA we inherit only from our mothers.

The percentage of the population with diabetes has been masked by malnutrition, just as vitamin B12 can mask the symptoms of pernicious anemia. The answer is not to malnourish our children to hide the symptom of high blood sugar, but to find a cure for the underlying disease, which causes damage even if blood sugar levels are maintained at a low level.

Editor’s comment: The above makes a valuable contribution to a discussion of obesity in adults. However, it remains important for children to be taught to eat a nutritious diet and to adopt healthy life styles, including exercise, to prevent becoming overweight. Ours are not the only generations having to deal with stress.