The title of the infographic is, Thinking Critically About: The Challenges of Obesity and Weight Control
The Learning Objective Question reads, How does obesity affect physical and psychological health, and what factors are involved in weight management?
The title in the first panel is, A Growing Problem. The text reads, Obesity is associated with: A bulleted list begins.
Bullet item 1 text reads, Physical health risks, including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, gallstones, arthritis, and certain types of cancer. (Footnote 1: Kitahara et al., 2014.)
Bullet item 2 text reads, Increased depression, especially among women. (Footnote 2: de Wit et al., 2010; Luppino et al., 2010.)
Bullet item 3 text reads, Bullying, outranking race and sexual orientation as the biggest reason for youth bullying in Western cultures (Footnote 3: Puhl et al., 2015.)
The illustration is of a young woman eating a doughnut.
A line graph titled, Percentage Overweight in 195 Countries Studied (Footnote 4: GBD, 2017) is shown on a backdrop of the globe. The horizontal axis is labeled Year, starting at 1975 and ending at 2015. The vertical axis represents percentage, starting at 20 percent and ending at 50 percent. A line representing women starts at around 30 percent in 1980 and goes up to 38 percent in 2015. A line representing men starts at around 30 percent in 1980 and goes up to 38 percent in 2015. A textbox in the graph reads, Variations are huge, from 15 percent in North Korea to 85 percent in Iceland. Outside the graph, a textbox pointing toward the globe reads, ZERO countries decreased their obesity rate. Another textbox pointing to the year 1975 reads, since 1975, the worldwide obesity rate has nearly tripled. (Footnote 5: NCD, 2016.) In the U.S., adult obesity has more than doubled and child-teen obesity has quadrupled. (Footnote 6: Flegal et al., 2010, 2012, 2016.)
An illustration titled, Body Mass Index (BMI) shows a weighing scale. The weight window on the scale shows the weights 25 plus and 30 plus with a red line at the center between both the weights. A textbox pointing toward 25 plus reads, overweight, and a textbox pointing toward 30 plus reads, obese. Text on the scale reads, See how your BMI compares to others in your country and in the world. An arrow pointing downward reads, tinyurl.com/GiveMyBMI.
The title for the next panel is How Did We Get Here? Beside the title the text reads, Does obesity reflect a simple lack of willpower, as some people presume? (Footnote 7: NORC, 2016b.) Under this is the subtitle Physiology Factors. Three sections with bullet points are under the subtitle.
The first bulleted list heading reads, Storing fat was adaptive.
Bullet item 1 text reads, This ideal form of stored energy carried our ancestors through periods of famine. People in impoverished places still find heavier bodies attractive, as plumpness signals affluence and status. (Footnote 8: Furnham & Baguma, 1994; Nettle et al, 2017; Swami, 2015.)
Bullet item 2 text reads: In food-rich countries, the drive for fat has become dysfunctional (Footnote 9: Hall, 2016.)
The second bulleted list heading reads, Set point and metabolism matter.
Bullet item 1 text reads, Fat (lower metabolic rate than muscle) requires less food intake to maintain than it did to gain.
Bullet item 2 text reads, If weight drops below set point/settling point, the brain triggers an increase in hunger and a decrease in metabolism.
Bullet item 3 text reads, Body perceives starvation; adapts by burning fewer calories. Most dieters in the long run regain what they lose on weight-loss programs. (Footnote 10: Mann et al., 2015.)
Bullet item 4 text reads, 30 weeks of competition on The Biggest Loser, 6 years later, Only 1 of 14 contestants kept the weight off. On average they regained 70 percent of what they lost and were still struggling with lessened caloric burn from their slowed metabolism (Footnote 11: Fothergill et al., 2016.)
The third bulleted list heading reads, Genes influence us.
Bullet item 1 text reads, Lean people seem naturally disposed to move about, burning more calories than energy-conserving overweight people, who tend to sit still longer. (Footnote 12: Levine et al., 2005.)
Bullet item 2 text reads, Adoptive siblings’ body weights are uncorrelated with one another or with their adoptive parents, instead resembling their biological parents’ weight (Footnote 13: Grilo & Pogue-Geile, 1991.)
Bullet item 3 text reads, Identical twins have closely similar weights, even if raised apart (Footnote 14: Hjelmborg et al., 2008; Plomin et al., 1997.) Much lower fraternal twin weight correlation suggests genes explain two-thirds of our varying body mass. (Footnote 15: Maes et al., 1997.)
Bullet item 4 text reads, More than 100 genes have been identified as each affecting weight in some small way. (Footnote 16: Akiyama et al., 2017.)
The cartoon in this panel is of a large group of round, yellow fat cells all following their fat-cell leader.
Still in the How Did We Get Here? panel is another section, titled, Environmental Factors. A bulleted list begins.
Bullet item 1 text reads, Sleep loss makes us more vulnerable to obesity. (Footnote 17: Keith et al., 2006; Nedeltcheva et al., 2010; Taheri, 2004; Taheri et al., 2004.)
Under this bullet item are three cartoonish oval shapes with eyes and mouths, all holding forks, with napkins tucked under their chins. Over these shapes is the word, Increasing. Under these shapes is the caption, Ghrelin—appetite-stimulating stomach hormone. Next, a left-facing arrow points back to the ghrelin shapes from an illustration of a gray cloud with broken zees (representing broken sleep) around the words Sleep deprivation. After the sleep-deprivation cloud is a right-facing arrow pointing to three bespectacled oval shapes with closed eyes, wiping their mouths with handkerchiefs. These shapes decrease in size. Over these leptin shapes is the word decreasing. Under the shapes is the caption, Leptin—reports body fat to the brain. The illustrations show how sleep-deprivation causes ghrelin, the appetite-stimulating hormone, to increase, and leptin, which reports body fat to the brain, decreases, resulting in weight gain.
Bullet item 2 text reads, Social influences: Our own odds of becoming obese triple if a close friend becomes obese. (Footnote 18: Christakis & Fowler, 2007.)
Bullet item 3 text reads, Food and activity levels: Worldwide, we eat more and move less, with 31 percent of adults (including 43 percent of Americans and 25 percent of Europeans) now sedentary—averaging less than 20 minutes per day of moderate activity such as walking (Footnote 19: Hallal et al., 2012.)
Beside this bulleted list is a note that reads, With weight, as with intelligence and other characteristics, there can be high levels of heritability (genetic influence on individual differences) without heredity explaining group differences. Genes mostly determine why one person today is heavier than another. Environment mostly determines why people today are heavier than their counterparts 50 years ago.