AS PEOPLE in rich countries know very well, eating too much food and burning too few calories is why a substantial number of us are overweight or obese. Now, however, a remarkable change in perspective has come from the discovery that obesity actually provides people with temporary protection from the harmful effects of fat.
The insight has come from re-examining the common assumption that fatness itself drives the development of metabolic syndrome, which is what causes so much of the actual damage. The syndrome comes with a mixture of life-threatening effects, with cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes being among the most serious.
In fact, it now seems that body fat may be a barrier that stops millions of Americans and portly citizens elsewhere from going on to develop the syndrome.
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“Body fat may be a barrier that stops millions of portly citizens from developing metabolic syndrome”
As we report on page 8, the real damage is caused by the inflammatory effect of high levels of fat in the bloodstream. And ironically, it’s fat cells that protect us from this by serving as toxic dumps, locking away the real villains of the modern diet.
The problem is that this protection only lasts so long, until there is simply no more room inside the fat cells. That’s when they start to break down, leading to a toxic spill into the bloodstream. This sets off an inflammatory response that causes various kinds of damage to body tissues. In this way, every excess calorie takes people closer to metabolic syndrome.
So what can we do to stop a superabundance of fat triggering the syndrome? Of course there’s no substitute for a healthy diet and exercise, but exhortations to this effect seem to be of limited use. As with cigarettes and alcohol, a tax on calories – pricing foods by their energy content – is increasingly seen as another “lever” to change behaviour by making obesity too costly.
The new research may even suggest treatments to combat metabolic syndrome, such as anti-inflammatory drugs. One promising candidate is salsalate, an arthritis drug related to aspirin, and the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston is now considering large-scale trials.
What might be more helpful, though, is simply a wider recognition that fatty and sugary foods are more directly toxic than we had assumed. Ideally, people should be as well informed about the harmful effects of what they eat as, for example, pregnant women are about drinking and smoking.
There is a consolation – you have your fat tissue to protect you when you consume that extra burger or sweetened soda. But now you know the perils of pushing your friendly fat cells beyond their natural limits.