Canceled: The Root Causes of the Obesity Epidemic

All UT events are cancelled for the remainder of the spring semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alex Bentley, professor and head of the UT Department of Anthropology, will present “The Root Causes of the Obesity Epidemic” Friday, April 17.

Consumption of excess sugar, particularly in sugar-sweetened beverages, is a known contributor to both childhood and adult obesity. Many population health studies have identified sugar as a major factor in the obesity epidemic. One problem with this theory, however, has been that sugar consumption in the US began to decline in the late 1990s while obesity rates continued to rise well into the 2010s. In his presentation, Bentley discuss how current obesity rates in adults in the United States could be the result of dietary changes that took place decades ago. The findings are based on a study he published in Economics and Human Biology in September 2019.