Chewing the fat

What role does fast food play in the world’s obesity epidemic, and how can we moderate its effect? This week’s journal offers several new insights into the complex interplay between dietary intake, environmental exposure, and genetic risk. We know that eating fried and other energy dense foods increases the risk of obesity, even if the role of certain types of fat in raising cardiovascular risk is uncertain (doi:10.1136/bmj.g2238). We also know that some people are at increased genetic risk of obesity. Qibin Qi and colleagues have now found an interaction between high intake of fried food and high genetic risk, as measured by pooling the effects of common genetic variants (doi:10.1136/bmj.g1610). In an analysis …