Center for Computational Molecular Biology Distinguished Lecture
"Why We Get Fat: Adiposity 101 and the Alternative Hypothesis of Obesity"
Gary Taubes, Award Winner, Science Writer "Good Calories, Bad Calories"
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 4:00 P.M.
Room 241 Swig Boardroom (2nd Floor CIT)
Since the 1950s, overweight and obesity have been perceived as "energy balance" disorders, caused specifically by overeating and sedentary behavior. Virtually all research in obesity and related fields is predicated on this energy balance paradigm, as is the conventional wisdom on how to cure and prevent obesity: consume fewer calories than expended and we will become lean. Reasonable as it seems, this prescription has little to no efficacy, suggesting the possibility that the underlying hypothesis is incorrect.
What's the alternative? Prior to World War II, European clinicians argued that to understand obesity, we have to think of it as fundamentally a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not energy balance. A defect in the regulation of adipose tissue metabolism causes the accumulation of excess fat, and positive energy balance is an effect, not a cause. By the 1960s, it was clear that fat accumulation is fundamentally regulated by the hormone insulin, which in turn is secreted primarily in response to the carbohydrates in our diet. Thus, a reasonable hypothesis of obesity and overweight is that these conditions are caused not by excess calorie consumption, but by the quantity and quality of carbohydrates consumed.
Host: Sorin Istrail
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