Sweetened drinks like Pepsi and Coke are the biggest contributors to obesity, according to Patricia Gregory, a dietician at the weight management center Optimal Weight in Gainesville, Fla.

“I probably haven’t met very many people over 250 pounds that didn’t get that way by taking in a fair amount of Coke or sweetened tea,” she said.

The bottom line though is your calorie consumption must be less than calories burned. She said that when you consume more calories than you burn, those excess calories lead to excess fat.

She said that eating at a fast food restaurant, where you can consume 1,000 calories in four minutes, is a great cause to the obesity epidemic.

While Gregory believes that calorie consumption is the greatest cause to obesity, there are other factors that contribute to obesity.

Other Obesity Contributors

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ENVIRONMENT
Gregory said that people who live in major urban cities, such as New York, are less likely to be obese because of the amount of exercise involved in their routine life. The dependence on walking from place to place is a great enough consumption of energy that it constitutes exercise for some people.

However, she stresses that your environment is what you make of it. While your environment may not be conducive to exercise in daily life, you can balance that by monitoring calorie consumption.

GENETICS
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, genes play a role in obesity as well. While genes do not contribute solely to obesity, it does have an influence.

Degenerative diseases as Bardet-Biedl syndrome and Prader-Willi syndrome can cause obesity. Bardet-Biedl syndrome is a genetic disorder which causes many health problems, one being obesity. Prader Willi syndrome is also a genetic disorder which causes an increased appetite.

Genes are a percentage of the contributor to obesity, but not the only percentage that will factor in, Gregory said.

“The percentage that genetics plays varies with each individual, as does the percentage of the diet,” she said. “There are some people who are much more predisposed to be heavy, but they have to work harder."

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