A study at the University of Wisconsin has found a link between a human adenovirus and obesity in chickens. It seems that chickens that are infected with this particular virus have a higher visceral fat and total body fat than chickens eating the same food who were not infected with the virus. This is a long way from saying that obesity has nothing to do with what you eat and how much you exercise, but it may be an additional factor.
What's particularly interesting is the fact that obesity world wide is on the rise and does not directly correlate to the way people are eating and exercising. If this were just a phenomenon in the US, I'd be ready to believe the whole thing could be blamed on our terrible diets--lets face it, we supersize to more calories than some people eat in a day. But since this is a world wide phenomenon, I'm more likely to believe that some other factor may be at work.
There's more work to be done on the issue, and I'm not going to stop watching what I eat, but I think everyone should be watching this.
Contagious obesity? Identifying the human adenoviruses that may make us fat | Science Blog
