by Perry McCarney

Created on: August 15, 2008   Last Updated: October 16, 2009

Blame is a highly emotive term, is it appropriate in the defining question of this debate? Does a person's genotype have an impact on their becoming obese, yes it does. Can it be "blamed" for the end result, not at all. People have free will and the ability to learn; succumbing to temptation or even addiction is a matter of choice, even if it is extremely difficult to resist, rather than genetic inevitability.

Our genotype, the genes in every diploid cell in our bodies - which is all of them except for our haploid reproductive cells, spermatozoa in men and ova in women - defines the range of possibilities that our interaction with our environment may produce as our phenotype, how we end up being physically. While that may influence whether we can become obese, it does not cause us to become so.

People, in our modern Western societies in particular, have become appallingly ready to blame external factors for problems, rather than face the reality of personal responsibility. Understandably so. Political parties encourage such attitudes to promote their political ambitions for control, commercial multi-nationals do so to promote their supposed "cures" for commercial gain and advertising repeatedly tells us of external remedies for problems that they tell us we have in the first place.

We need to accept just one basic and obvious truth!

Body mass can only increase if you consume more food than your body needs to meet maintenance requirements and energetic output. Although your body will primarily use carbohydrates, specifically glucose, for energy, it will metabolize and use fats and proteins if necessary. You quite simply cannot become overweight unless you over-consume.You need to ascertain the metabolic realities of your body, it varies for all of us, and then supply your body with the diet appropriate to it. Please realize that I use the word "diet" here in the context of its actual meaning, rather than the commercialized version multiple "health" companies and "specialists" try to sell us. Our diet is quite simply what we eat, no more or less. Specific diets are just that, a specific diet, but every single person in the world is "on a diet", unless they are in one of those areas where famine prevails. My apologies, but I find the constant misuse of this term in Western society, purely for commercial profit, to be extremely annoying!

Our modern society provides the opportunity to over-indulge our appetites, appetites that have evolved over millenia where most

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