Obesity and Economists

I have argued from facts, the literature and experience that almost all obesity is self imposed. You see it is s fundamental law of physics:

Input - Output = Net Accumulation

Unlike Economics and their various assumptions regarding human demand and its impact on the economy, the above is almost a tautology, it is true by definition, almost.

Thus obesity is simple, at 3500 Kcal per pound, eating 100 Kcal per day, 6 oz of soda for example, half a small can, would in one month's time add a pound of weight, all other things being constant. Thus that corn muffin at work in the morning at 600 Kcal would add almost a pound per work week. It is a fact of nature. No AD or AS analysis, just an energy balance.

Now one of the many pontificating economists has taken up the challenge, I faced this a year ago by a Harvard type who said in effect that the added soda was infringing on his liberty and that we should ignore it, when in fact the tubby kids will cost me more even as I age, well this other economist states:

I was reading a book about genetic engineering ... and was struck when... (the author) claimed:

Research shows that obesity is consistently attributed to laziness and a lack of self-discipline.

In reality, the truth may be just the opposite.  Studies of identical twins reared together or apart indicate that much obesity may be caused by hereditary factors.  In technical terms, the heritability of obesity, the percentage of observed variation among people that is attributed to genes, is very high, somewhere between 50 and 80 percent.

Do you see the problem with Green’s assertion?  He asks us to believe that just because obesity is 80% genetic, it can’t also be 80% due to laziness.  But why?  What are those two hypotheses viewed as mutually exclusive?  Is it because genetic characteristics are viewed as “not one’s fault,” whereas laziness is viewed as a character flaw?  But why shouldn’t character flaws be genetic?

First of all, no matter what your genes if you adhere to the above equation you will not get fat. It would be physically impossible. No input, even with no output, is no accumulation. Period, simple. It is not the genes in the twins it is the twinkies.

Thus my argument is that economists were given a great opportunity to understand physics, not a complicate element of it but a simple one. Mass balance. But alas they get that wrong too. They can use massive equations that fail to reflect reality but when reality hits them in the face they reject it.

Is there a problem here?