The Documentary:

She's cute, she's Canadian and she's a comedian. Follow Katherine Ryan on her quest to find out the secrets hidden in her genes. Is there such a thing as a fat gene? How much do genes affect personality? And how will the results of Katherine's tests impact her day-to-day life? A funny, thought-provoking look at the world of genetic testing.

WEEK 5: FAT

CAN YOU BLAME YOUR WEIGHT ON YOUR GENES?

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My dad's name is Finbar Joseph Jude Cornelius Ryan.
Yeah.
Mm, not a big fan of my body anymore.
I could say that my boobs are one of the favorite parts of my body
because they're fake.
And they're great.
Now, there's a whole category of genes
that they can test for obesity propensity,
so the propensity of you to be fat.
You look like the type who's not prone.
-I think I'm prone. -Or are you working really hard?
I was a thin kid. I was never twiggy and skinny.
I always had, like, a little shape.
I get that from my mother's side.
I always had a little bum and like thicker little legs,
like, I didn't have little ankles.
But my mother was really health-conscious,
and she did not give us crap at all.
We weren't allowed to be fat kids,
and I would not allow my kids to be fat kids either.
I eat healthfully most of the time,
but if I have a bad weekend I'll gain weight right away.
There's a lot of genes you can test for, and you've got--
I've got the results for one, two, three, four, five of these tests.
You have typical odds of obesity, meaning the average.
Typical for an American or typical for...?
There's a gene for obesity.
Some people need enormous amount of food.
Notice how there's a map of America to talk of obesity?
It's all like the Mid and South.
It actually took people of European descent,
but for you they compared you to people in your class,
which is the European class.
What this is telling me is
even though these sorts of tests are not, by no means, solid,
on the aggregate, it looks as if you've got
a pretty good chance of staying slender
if you don't eat too much fat.
Um, they did, like, studies of how people would react
and they told people that they were positive for the obesity gene
and they did have a propensity to gain more weight.
And all the people in the group
that were told they had the obesity gene
just ate more and got fatter.
They weren't like, "Oh, no! I better watch what I eat!"
-No. They were like -- -Seriously?!
There's something called "chubby chasers" now.
Really?
Yeah, celebrating big, beautiful women -- BBWs.
-Really? -Yeah.
-Is this a Canadian thing? -No!
America has the most obese kids anywhere,
but I see a lot of fat kids here, too.
So I don't know.
If there's pressure on kids to look good,
they're not too bothered by it,
because a lot of them look pregnant to me.
I think I'd rather know what was in my genes
than not know and then kind of have to deal with it later on and say,
"God, I could have known."
Even if it was something you can't cure, I'd rather know.
I've never been a fan of sportiness.
But there's two kinds of running, right?
There's sort of you can run really, really fast for short distances
or you can run a long time quite slowly.
Do you have...?
The long distance running is the one I'm worse at.
-Really? -Yeah.
That's very interesting, because according to your genes,
that's exactly what I would predict.
Really?
But I'm not so good at running fast, short distances, either.
That's okay, but you have a preference, right?
You obviously feel better running shorter distances.
Yes.
And you feel like you can put on a bit of burst of speed if you have to,
like if somebody was chasing you.
Okay, well, you're CC in this particular marker,
and this means you have two working copies of a gene
that's active in your fast-twitch muscles.
You've got fast-twitch muscles and slow-twitch muscles.
And you've got the gene on in the muscles
that are responsible for really quick, sudden bursts of energy.
The kind of thing you'd need if you were
sprinting or running away from a mugger or --
Or doing stand-up comedy!
Um, I was definitely not traditionally sporty in school.
I did not play like football or basketball or tennis
or any sort of -- anything that's recognized as a sport.
But I did all the very feminine things like ballet and tap
and jazz and lyrical and swimming and piano
and theater and singing lessons and gymnastics.
All the girlie things.
Now, you might wonder why we have the ability
to be good at fast or slow.
Yeah.
And it's not really understood completely why,
but I think our ancient ancestors had to do both, really.
You know, that they're wandering around wherever,
the prairie or the jungle,
and they really needed to run like hell.
It was important to be able to do that.
But also, equally, I mean,
maybe they had to travel long, long distances in order to find water,
so they had to travel for days and days and days
and then they would need to have this sort of...
...slower twitch capacity,
and actually, most people have both.
There's almost 150 different genes so far we know about
that control how good you are at sports.
Outcome -- what's a muscle performance likely sprinter?
Well, no. I read that there can be --
Unless there's chocolate in the kitchen.
Plants are really dangerous. Plants are massively dangerous.
Some of these red berries and leaves, and they can kill you.
Like, oh, my God!
If you can't handle the truth, then, like, who are you?

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