I swear. How stupid can people be. Always looking for new excuses for OBESITY.

Yes, yes. We are the victims-beneficiaries of our genes. No doubt about it.

But as for obestity, I thought we had figured out the main cause: junk-food eating American suburbanites driving madly around highways in large vehicles and then returning to the cul-de-saced homes in neighborhoods with no sidewalks.

Years ago, a friend said, "They can take away my health insurance because I smoke and have HIV on the same day they take away health insurance from the fat-assed Americans who eat themselves to death."

Indeed.

From The New York Times...

In Study, Hormone Reduced Appetite in Mice

Hungry or full, fat or thin: it is mostly a matter of hormones, dozens of them, carrying messages between the digestive tract, the fat cells and the brain. Eat. Don't eat. Burn calories. Store fat.

Today, researchers at Stanford University are reporting that they have found a previously unknown member of this chemical cascade, a hormone with a much coveted power: it sharply reduces the desire to eat.

The new substance, which the scientists named obestatin (OHB-statin), is made in the stomach and small intestine, and it seems to prompt the brain to send out a signal that says "eat less."

Mice given the hormone for eight days ate half as much as usual and lost weight, the researchers are reporting today in the journal Science. The hormone seems to reduce hunger in part by slowing the passage of food through the stomach and small intestine. Read entire story