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Health psychology: Factors of obesity
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Learning outcome: Discuss the factors related to overeating and the development of obesity.
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Word count: 1,800Learning outcome:
Discuss the factors related to overeating and the development of obesity.
Obesity is the excess of body fat which can result in an impairment of general physical
health. It is beginning to be an epidemic with around one billion of adults being overweight.
Obesity can be caused because of multiple factors such as genetic predisposition, neurobiology,
sedentary lifestyle, overeating, cultural norms, socio-economic disadvantage, cognitive restraint,
false hope syndrome, and more. Obesity can sometimes be classified as an addiction which
refers to an uncontrollable behaviour in using the specific substance that they are dependent on.
There are biological correlates of obesity for example, one obese parent results in a 40%
chance of a child becoming obese and two obese parents increases the likelihood to 80%.
Stunkard et al (1990) found that when comparing the BMI of 93 pairs of identical twins, genetic
factors accounted for 66%-70% of the variance in body weight. There was a strong genetic
component in determining obesity but it wasn’t exactly examined how the genes play a role. One
theory is that metabolism rates could be passed on genetically but it still has to be tested.
Another suggestion related to the amount of fat cells there are in the body and the fact that they
could be predetermined as well. This implies that there is a strong possibility that obesity is
genetic and people who are obese should be careful with having children as their children could
also be predisposed to obesity. This study would work better if it looked at whether the
participants’ biological parents are obese or not in order to see if obesity is a family gene. The
study is correlational and not causational and it can’t exactly be determined whether genes play
a role. Overeating can be a reason why people become obese, and the overeating habit can be
caught by the children of overeating parents and therefore it’s not only the genes that are
passed on from the parents but also the lifestyle of overeating. It’s then harder for children to
stop such a lifestyle when they are older, thus the environment has as big of an impact as genes
do.
This study and results can be related to evolution because humans are genetically programmed
to store food when it is available in order to survive in the times when food is scarce, and the
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