Researchers in University College Cork are calling for obesity to be renamed ‘Chronic Appetite Dysregulation’. 

The 30th European Congress on Obesity took place in Dublin this week, sparking conversations around the future of obesity.  

Researchers in UCC, for example, have suggested that obesity be renamed to ‘Chronic Appetite Dysregulation’ (CAD) to reflect that it is an inherited disease. 

Philosopher at the School of Public Health in UCC Dr Margaret Steele said this research is from a “multidisciplinary point of view”.  

“One of my colleagues is an endocrinologist and I’m a philosopher,” she told The Hard Shoulder. 

She said mainstream perceptions of obesity do not reflect the actual science.  

“If you ask a random person on the street, ‘is obesity a disease?’, I'm not sure that they're going to say yes,” she explained. 

“It's because we haven't done a really good job explaining what obesity the disease actually is. Because it's not really about BMI. It's not about how fat or thin you are.” 

“It's about your ability to change your behavior at a deep kind of unconscious level in response to your environment. And I don't think we've done a good job of explaining that.” 

The meaning of obesity

While Dr Steele is comfortable describing herself as fat, she understands other people are not and may prefer to describe themselves as obese.  

However, she argued the “neutral descriptor fat” and the medical condition obesity have become synonymous to too many people. 

“We don’t get to say what obesity means to the general public,” she said. “it already has a meaning it already means fat, or high BMI.” 

“If we're trying to use that same word, to convey something much more complex about this emerging medical knowledge about the disease, we're just really confusing people and we're not getting our message across.” 

"Forget about BMI"

Dr Steele said renaming obesity to CAD will help people understand the difference between those who are overweight and those who have a medical issue as a result of genetics or other issues.  

“My biggest health issue is probably low blood pressure, but I'm fat,” she said. “There may come a time in the future when I start to experience metabolic complications and then I might need medical treatment.” 

“But for the moment, it makes way more sense to forget about body size - hit the gym, take care of yourself, eat your fruits and vegetables, the stuff that we should all do for our health, and just forget about BMI.” 

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