Education about genetic causes of eating behavior found to affect attitudes toward people with higher weights

Education about gene-by-environment interaction (GXE) causes of eating behaviors can have beneficial downstream effects on attitudes toward people with higher weights. A recent study included in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior found that participants who received education about GXE concepts reported higher empathy and held fewer stigmatizing attitudes toward individuals with higher weights. GXE is when two different genotypes respond to variations in the environment in two different ways.

“Discriminatory attitudes against people with higher weight have been observed at comparable rates to racial and gender discrimination and are often more overt because weight stigma is viewed as a more socially acceptable form of negative bias,” says corresponding author Susan Persky, Ph.D. , Social and Behavioral Research Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.

“However, weight has a sizable genetic component. Our study found that increasing education about the role of genetics in eating behavior may therefore help to alleviate weight stigma by reducing the extent to which individuals are blamed for their weight.”

Participants were recruited via the Prolific online platform and were assigned randomly to watch an educational or a control video. Participants then watched a set of vignette scenarios that depicted what it is like to have a predisposition toward obesogenic eating behaviors from either a first-person or third-person perspective. Participants completed a questionnaire measuring GXE knowledge, causal attributions, weight stigma, and empathy after intervention.

Participants who watched the educational video demonstrated greater GXE knowledge, reported higher empathy toward the characters in the vignette scenarios and held less stigmatizing attitudes (notably blame) toward individuals with higher weights. Exploratory mediation analyzes indicated that the educational video led to these positive downstream effects by increasing the extent to which participants attributed genetic causes to eating behaviors.

Communicating GXE causes of eating behaviors to the public is a useful way to improve attitudes toward people with higher weights. Therefore, the authors envision the potential for similar GXE education to be broadly disseminated as part of public health campaigns. Moreover, a greater understanding of these concepts may help improve patient-provider interactions around healthy eating and weight.

“Focusing on GXE causes of eating may help tackle entrenched weight stigma among the general public and health care providers,” suggests the study’s lead author Alison Jane Martingano, Ph.D., National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health. “This research provides initial evidence that future educational interventions may benefit from focusing on eating behaviors, specifically, when attempting to improve attitudes toward people with higher weights.”