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New research shows that people are more susceptible to obesity if they have overweight family members, as inherited eating habits seems to be a leading cause of the problem.

Seven genetic variants found to affect obesity imply that DNA’s overriding effect on the body is not to regulate how fat is stored, but to target the brain and cause a change in the way food is eaten.

Five of these seven variants are most prevalent in the brain, suggesting that they work by altering appetite and how full we feel as well as affecting preferences over certain foods.

Despite the findings suggesting genes play a part in why some people are overweight and others are not, slow metabolic rates and higher fat absorption through genes not the sole factor in determining obesity.

Two independent research teams studied the genetic factors that seem to have an effect on weight and the results show that their most prominent effect is to change the amount of food people consume. Certain genetic make-up in some people may just make it harder or easier to know when to stop eating.

The studies display how both nature and nurture combine to form the roots this common biological disease. The results make for happy reading for therapists as it would suggest that people can actually take control of their food consumption and change their whole attitude to food with help, despite them being genetically pre-disposed.

“In cases like this, the line between nature and nurture begins to blur,” said Kari Stefansson, of deCODE Genetics, an Icelandic company that carried out one of the studies. “Genetic factors seem to be influencing environmental risk factors.”

Joel Hirschhorn, of the Children’s Hospital, Boston, who headed the other research team, by the international Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits (Giant) consortium, said,“The genes near these variants are all active in the central nervous system, suggesting that inherited variation in appetite regulation may have something to do with predisposition to obesity.”

The risk of obesity was already known to be linked to genetic factors and studies using twins prove that 40 to 70 per cent of the difference in body mass index is hereditary. However it was as soon as just 18 months ago when doctors found the first genetic variant in a gene called FTA. The research was published in Nature Genetics and brought the number of variants strongly linked to obesity to nine.