by Zack Beauchamp
Mark Hanson wants us to rethink anti-obesity campaigns:
[W]e’re starting to realise that behaviours such as propensity to exercise, or appetite and taste for certain foods, which we previously thought to be based on individual choice, have a large constitutional component – in part based on inherited genes, in part on epigenetic changes to gene function in response to the developmental environment, and in part through early learning. If we focus on our early development, and in promoting health in parents even before they conceive a child, we can help both them and the next generation to avoid obesity and disease. We don’t have to accept this as our fate.
The Dish 