scieneenceee
was just discussing with a dude about this but i dont think this idea that ‘british colonialism caused asian genes to be metabolically fucked up’ is inherently that accurate people seem to be extrapolating from 3 points, all of which to be true
asians uniquely suffer from metabolic conditions at high rates
famines change ppl on a biological level to favor high body fat and low lean mass
the british caused famines
so the arg is, the british caused famines, so no.2 occured, which caused 1 to occur
in terms of genome change, this pretty clearly isn’t true, a fair bit of the problems seem to also be seen in the archeological record (ancient origins of low lean mass among south asians and implications for modern type 2 diabetes susceptibility). this means that asians likely had genes ill suited to sedentary/high cal lifestyles prior to colonial influence. also thrifty gene hypothesis probably isnt true.
so the arg instead goes, their epigenome/methylation patterns changed—so even if the normal genes weren’t so great, the british fucked the interpretation of the genome even more. there are rat studies showing that chronic overfeeding/underfeeding for 1-2 generations can cause metabolic problems for the following 5 gens. but—it’s hard to tell how strongly this applies to humans of which the main epigenome studies are focused on single generational influence of famines (and the effects are significant, but small compared to asian metabolic problems)
the most compelling evidence is in the aforementioned archaeological paper, which shows that stature (mean bone length) and lean mass (mean bone breadth) of asians hv been falling for thousands of years, which the peaks of the drops aligned with when agriculture began. high agricultural dependence generally selects for famine resistant bodies (high body fat), and, combining this with countries such as india being generally very hot and thus selecting for low heat bodies (low lean mass), those two factors alone may be sufficient enough to explain most of the metabolic problems
who knows tho idk