In light of America’s ever expanding waistline, demonization of the overweight seems to be at an all-time high.
 
A 2005 study in the journal Obesity asked college students to rank a set of pictures based on “whom they liked best.” The pictures included a person on crutches, one in a wheelchair, another with a facial deformity, someone missing a hand and an obese person. Across all races, sexes and weight classes, the obese person was consistently ranked as one of the worst.
 
Many researchers have also jumped on the demonizing obesity bandwagon. Studies have blamed everything from global warming (increased fossil fuel use to carry heavier passengers) to car crash fatalities (obese men are more likely to die in car crashes). While some of this research is rigorous and relevant — for instance, studies on the effects of obesity on national health care costs —  other studies rely on the flimsiest of justifications to prove why obese people are destroying the world.
 
Denigrating the obese doesn’t help people lose weight. It can actually have the opposite effect — overeating is often linked to depression or just plain old unhappiness.
 
Clearly, the obese are not completely blameless when it comes to their weight. Most cases of obesity can be explained by an abundance of calories and a sedentary lifestyle, but a growing body of research suggests the causes of obesity are not nearly as simple as we once believed.
 
According to a study in the journal Pediatrics, catching a cold can make children more likely to develop obesity. The study found obese children are more likely to possess antibodies from adenovirus-36, one of the hundreds of common cold viruses, than their normal-weight counterparts. Because our immune systems develop antibodies as a response to infection, possessing the antibodies to fight a particular disease indicates an earlier infection.
 
It’s hard to believe a cold could cause obesity, and at first it seems much more likely that obese people are simply more likely to get sick. However, other experiments with adenovirus-36 have supported the viral obesity hypothesis.
 
Researchers at Wayne State University injected rhesus and marmoset monkeys with the virus and compared their weight gain with an uninfected control group. The infected monkeys gained three times as much weight as the uninfected group even though all of the monkeys were given the same amount of food and exercise.
 
Evidence for a genetic cause of obesity is also beginning to emerge. The basic hypothesis for why some people have “fat” genes is a mechanism for surviving starvation. For most of human history, people struggled to get enough calories to survive, but in the modern world people genetically predisposed to getting the most energy possible out of food are more likely to develop obesity than people with less efficient metabolisms.
 
Finally, there is an undeniable link between income and obesity. It comes as no surprise low-income families are disproportionately represented when it comes to obesity. After all, cheap food is rarely healthy food, and poor parents working multiple jobs usually don’t have the time to make healthy meals for themselves. Feeding a family on a tight budget is a lot easier on the Dollar Menu than in the produce aisle.
 
Obesity is one of the last health problems society says its OK to mock. No one makes fun of people with bulimia, but no one seems to mind if you laugh at the fat guy. Personally, I blame people’s ignorance of the sometimes uncontrollable causes of obesity.
 
While I wholeheartedly admit many cases of obesity are caused by poor lifestyle choices and overeating, we shouldn’t vilify an entire group of people when we don’t understand their condition.
 
 
Andrew Shockey is a 20 year-old biological engineering sophomore from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Ashockey.
 
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Contact Andrew Shockey at [email protected]