Documentaries
WHY ARE WE GETTING SO FAT? (TVNZ 1, Tuesday, 9.30pm)
Is obesity the most-researched health issue ever? If the number of TV programmes devoted to the Western world’s burgeoning waistlines is anything to go by, then yes. And here’s another.
The statistics in this BBC Horizon documentary relate to the UK; however, we may watch the programme in the knowledge that our obesity rates are worse. Cambridge geneticist Giles Yeo explains what he thinks is going on and meets health professionals who are working on solutions.
His research focuses on a genetic variant called FTO that disrupts the indicators telling the brain that we are full. However, he wants to get out of the lab to further his understanding of the different reasons that factor into being overweight.
“Obesity is perceived as really quite a simple problem – eat less, move more,” he says, “and that is fine; simple physics. The problem,
however, is that why people eat more is quite complex.”
The people he meets often reveal stressful life events: a man whose wife died, a woman whose mother committed suicide.
Another problem is the availability of high-calorie food in an inactive world, and if you’re unlucky enough to have the FTO variant, you will be more affected by this “obesogenic” environment.