firecat

OMG, I hope I get through moderation because I just tore Ms Public Health a new one. She's so wrong she's not even in a galaxy the light from Right can hit within 2000 years. The single most robust predictor of negative health outcomes is socioeconomic status, and the dark secret that health care professionals don't want to accept based on all the research is that while there is a highly heritable component of body weight (if your family is fat, you probably will be, too), the particular type of fat accumulation most often (but not always!) seen in people with metabolic syndromes and other disorders normally blamed on "obesity" is almost certainly caused by stress and inflammation, and correlates very strongly with SES in epidemiological studies. In other words, the broker and more stressed you are, the more likely you are to become fatter than you might have if you were leading a less stressful life and had more resources and better health care.