A New Understanding of an Old "Obesity Gene"

As you know if you've been following this blog for a while, obesity risk has a strong genetic component .  Genome-wide association studi...

The Genetics of Obesity, Part III

Genetics Loads the Gun, Environment Pulls the Trigger Thanks to a WHS reader* for reminding me of the above quote by Dr. Francis Collins, di...

The Genetics of Obesity, Part II

Rodents Lead the Way The study of obesity genetics dates back more than half a century.  In 1949, researchers at the Jackson Laboratories id...

The Genetics of Obesity, Part I

Choosing the Right Parents: the Best Way to Stay Lean? In 1990, Dr. Claude Bouchard and colleagues published a simple but fascinating study ...

Beyond Ötzi: European Evolutionary History and its Relevance to Diet. Part III

In previous posts, I reviewed some of the evidence suggesting that human evolution has accelerated rapidly since the development of agricult...

Beyond Ötzi: European Evolutionary History and its Relevance to Diet. Part I

In the previous post, I explained that Otzi descended in large part from early adopters of agriculture in the Middle East or nearby.  What I...

Lessons From Ötzi, the Tyrolean Ice Man. Part I

This is Otzi, or at least a reconstruction of what he might have looked like.  5,300 years ago, he laid down on a glacier near the border be...

Eocene Diet Follow-up

Now that WHS readers around the globe have adopted the Eocene Diet and are losing weight at an alarming rate, it's time to explain the ...