Are we finally on a path to break the cycle of obesity? Very interesting study from Baylors College of Medicine.
ScienceDaily (July 16, 2008) — 
Overweight mothers give birth to offspring who become even heavier, resulting in amplification of obesity across generations, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers in Houston who found that chemical changes in the ways genes are expressed — a phenomenon called epigenetics -could affect successive generations of mice.
“There is an obesity epidemic in the United States and it’s increasingly recognized as a worldwide phenomenon,” said Dr. Robert A. Waterland, assistant professor of pediatrics — nutrition at BCM and lead author of the study that appears in the International Journal of Obesity. “Why is everyone getting heavier and heavier? One hypothesis is that maternal obesity before and during pregnancy affects the establishment of body weight regulatory mechanisms in her baby. Maternal obesity could promote obesity in the next generation.”
Waterland and his colleagues studied the effect of maternal obesity in three generations of genetically identical mice, all with the same genetic tendency to overeat. One group of mice received a standard diet; the other a diet supplemented with the nutrients folic acid, vitamin B12, betaine and choline. The special ‘methyl supplemented’ diet enhances DNA methylation, a chemical reaction that silences genes.
“We wanted to know if, even among genetically identical mice, maternal obesity would promote obesity in her offspring, and if the methyl supplemented diet would affect this process,” said Waterland. “Indeed, those on the regular diet got fatter and fatter with each generation. Those in the supplemented group, however, did not.”
“We think DNA methylation may play an important role in the development of the hypothalamus (the region of the brain that regulates appetite),” said Waterland.
“Twenty years ago, it was proposed that just as genetic mutations can cause cancer, so too might aberrant epigenetic marks — so called ‘epimutations.’ That idea is now largely accepted and the field of cancer epigenetics is very active. I would make the same statement for obesity. We are on the cusp of understanding that,” he said.
Waterland is also a researcher at the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center at BCM and Texas Children’s Hospital. Others who contributed to this research include Kajal Tahiliani, Marie-Therese Rached and Sherin Mirza of Baylor College of Medicine and the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center in Houston and Michael Travisano of the University of Minnesota in St. Paul.
Funding for this work came from the National Institutes of Health, the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Baylor College of Medicine (2008, July 16). Overweight Mothers Give Birth To Offspring Who Become Heavy, Amplifying Obesity Through Generations. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 15, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/07/080715104939.htm
I find it hard to believe that a person could eat enough food to get them to the size you show..Elaine did you see on CNN the other night that a woman could not loose any weight no matter what she did she just kept putting on the pounds, her doctor did not believe she was following the diet that she kept in her log book and finally washed his hands of her, when she finally found another doctor who seemed to have the time to check out her weight problem he found a cancerour turmor in her stomach and it weight 140 lbs. (140 lbs is not a typo) although they rarelly find a turmor that size, they have found them in other people, and remove them……..so not all people who look fat is from eating some do have a medical cause……….
Mary Anne - that picture is a pregnant woman, who obviously started off heavy and gained too much during pregnancy. About being that big……..OMG when I worked at St.Joe’s in AA most of the patients on the floor were morbidly obese. It was nothing to have 400 lb patients that took 4 of us to roll over or move. Heaviest we had on the floor when I was there was in the 500 lb range. There are special beds to accomodate these people, lifts to move them. It was awful.