According to the Food Research and Action Center two-thirds of the adults in the United States are overweight. Now Americans everywhere are turning to weight loss supplements and by-pass surgeries; however, some still believe genetics is the cause of their distress.

The obesity crisis today is largely the result of individuals taking in more calories than they can burn off in a day. As a result, not only are people loosing self-confidence, they are also increasing their risk of many weight related diseases. In the past, our ancestors had to expend a high amount of energy to get food and now, we don’t even have to step foot out of a vehicle, easily having over 2,000 calories at our fingertips. Studies show that obesity is indeed linked to the number of high calorie fast food restaurants available, so our environment definitely plays a role. Nevertheless, genes are still a factor in how our body actually obtains and holds onto fat, and how it releases it as energy from the food we consume. Hence, the genes of our ancestors allowed them to survive long periods without food because they constantly had to hunt. Now, we technically have the same type of gene, yet we do not go long periods between eating, hunting and chasing down our food.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention postulates that we may have genes that favor fat storage. If people don’t regulate food consumption, and keep eating, as much as they want, and with the addition of a sedentary lifestyle, they are bound to not see a change in their bodies they will adore. It seems that different people respond differently to the same environmental factors. This accounts for genetic variation, when genes behave differently under different circumstances. However identifying factors are not easy.

Scientists are currently working on dissecting which genes exactly are involved by focusing on how genes interact with the environment. Family history should definitely be taken into account. Even with out the aid of a doctor or genetic counselor, families can trace their family history with pedigrees and probabilities as to whether or not there might be a gene related to weight gain in their family. Studies have also been done that compare overweight individuals to non-obese people, and researchers looked for gene variation when it came to metabolism, over eating, or the tendency for the body to store fat. What they found was that several genes were related to the above factors. As a results, it is proposed that genes may be related to obesity by the variant of a single gene, monogenic obesity, or some cases may be multiple genes.