Don’t blame fatties for being fat

Fat is enigmatic stuff and there’s literally much more to it than meets the eye. It was fat that first got me interested in nutritional health, one day stumbling upon Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill by Canadian Udo Erasmus who broke through the anti-fat fascism of the Eighties and Nineties (when all fats were condemned as dangerous) by showing us the difference between good and bad fats.

The good fats are the Omega 3s, found in some seed oils (flax, hemp, cranberry) and in a highly converted form in certain fish oils. The bad fats are the saturated fats, as well as transfats used in processed foods like margarines, plus high levels of Omega 6 fats also found in many plant oils and used extensively in the manufacture of fast and baked foods.

Since then researchers have shown that saturated fats also need to be differentiated into good and bad categories, rehabilitating oils like coconut and palm kernel that had been sentenced to death by the anti-fat lobby.

Now, there’s a new school of thought that says even those saturated meat and dairy fats have been given a bad rap and that the real health issue is not the type but the quality of the fats we eat. If you eat meat or drink milk from free-ranging herds that have been spared antibiotics and bovine growth hormone, that have grazed on pesticide-free and fertiliser-free pastures (not on meal made with chicken faeces, bones from their own species, powdered feathers for protein and plastic pellets to provide “roughage”), the fat quality (and therefore the nutritional benefit) is light-years apart from that of their industrially-reared counterparts, which truly is toxic.

So the fat story is complex and keeps on changing as we learn more about the wobbly stuff. What is abundantly clear is that the fat-free fad has been a disaster for human nutrition and is likely one of the leading causes of the obesity epidemic and has also probably fuelled the growth of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease as well.

I collaborate with some leading players in the weight-loss industry, always on the lookout for new trends and research that might suggest the way forward in helping people manage their weight healthily. On Workers’ Day I did some work (how many calories does reading a book consume?), devouring an important new book, The 21st Century is Making You Fat by Pat Thomas (Gaia Thinking), health editor of Ecologist Magazine in the UK.

Thomas’s Book assembles all the latest research that points to a far more complex obesity model, arguing that environmental co-factors — not just the simplistic calorie counting/fat people are willpowerless lazy slobs model — are key to understanding the epidemic.

What really struck home was the chapter on “chemical calories”, how poisonous pollutants have impacted on our bodies’ ability to metabolise fat.

The starting point of this environmental model of obesity is some Italian research in the Nineties, which found that people who had undergone gastric bypass surgery showed a dramatic increase in the levels of organochlorines (DDT, dieldrin etc) in their bloodstreams as their body weight came down.

A further study in Quebec found that as these toxins were released into the bloodstream they also suppressed key thyroid hormones responsible for maintaining efficient metabolism. Now the slowing down of metabolism during weight loss is a well-known natural survival instinct (that’s why losing weight is so damned hard), but the Quebec research showed that the slowdown was so much greater in the presence of these poisons. Worse, levels of enzymes that determine how muscles use energy were also negatively impacted. Says Thomas: “To put this in lay terms, organochlorines essentially shut down the metabolic furnace that helps the body burn fat.”

Another researcher, Paula Baillie-Hamilton, describes these pollutants as a “chemical cosh” which bludgeons the body’s ability to produce hormones that regulate fat metabolism and destroys hormone receptors in fat cells.

The research suggests that the body, confronted by increasing levels of toxins, responds by creating fat cells to stash them in, effectively insulating and protecting the organs (liver, kidneys, heart, etc) from these poisons. But when you go on a diet, the fat cells shrink and release this toxic soup back into the blood stream, which now starts reducing the levels of fat-burning hormones and enzymes, slowing down your metabolism. Ergo the vicious circle known as the rebound-effect that dieters know oh-so-well.

The implications of these findings on dieting — especially yo-yo dieting — are ominous. If you keep going on diet you are likely not only to be releasing organ-damaging poisons into the bloodstream but you are also stuffing up the body’s fat-burning system. It’s a double-whammy.

So, contrary to conventional wisdom, increased fat levels might in fact be protective, helping us to dilute organochlorines and other toxins in the body. Thomas sums it up: “… it is possible the obesity epidemic is really an adaptive response by the body to a chemically toxic environment”.

Backing up the environmental model is the publication of so-called fat maps in the UK and USA which show that the incidence of obesity occurs in the most polluted regions of these countries.

The research must seem like mannah from heaven for those fatties who would love to absolve themselves of any responsibility for their weight and who can now pass the buck to the agri-chemical industry (do I hear a class action suit rumbling into action in the US?). But that is a small price to pay for a fat lot of new research that is helping us to better understand the story of fat.

Thomas’s book is provocative, well researched and well worth reading. Fat is indeed fascinating.