Robert Lustig and his colleagues at the University of California believe that obesity is laid down even before a child is born. There is a correlation between mom’s weight during pregnancy and the weight of her newborn, the more weight she gains during her 40 weeks of gestation causes the baby to have a higher birth weight, which can result in high fat cells leading that child to obesity later on in life. Since the fat cell number has been created for people before birth it must work through four physiological pathways including; genetics, epigenetics, developmental programming, and environmental toxins. Usually genetics and environment are a reason of blame for obesity, but actually our DNA only makes up a low number of genes that associate with obesity. Epigenetics is unlike genetics, it is the on and off button for a person’s genes, poor eating or lots of stress in the pregnant mother can cause a gene expression and function resulting in insulin resistance. The baby’s insulin determines how much fat is going to be laid down, the more insulin the baby has the more fat cells the child has, reverting back to the mother’s diet during pregnancy and before she gets pregnant. Developmental programming is the stress on the intrauterine environment from the mother’s diet, which causes the baby’s brain to create the hormone leptin which signals it to work for or against the fat cell quantity and its storage. Toxins in our environment can also have an impact on the fetal tissue …show more content…
It is often said that people are to blame for what kinds of food they choose to put in their mouths or to exercise to stay healthy. Everyone has free will to make choices whether they are bad or good. What some people may not know is that food addiction is existent, and some people battle with it. Comfort foods are what people find as a solace, this could be anything from childhood or home cooking, fast food, sugary sweets and carbs, or something that triggers them to the positive or negative feelings. Dr. Debbi Danowski states in her book Why can’t my child stop eating? “Emotional stressors that both kids and parents experience in this complex world that often leads to overeating. For many, eating is a way of coping with life, even to the point where they are not able to know the difference between eating for biological reasons or eating for emotional solace”