Coded gray.

Tuesday 18 December 2001

Padded backside

Pic of the day: Artificial obesity. It goes without saying that I've added some artificial padding here, since my male genes would not allow me to put my fat deposits this low even if I tried. But the sight should bring fond memories to all who live in tourist areas. While Norwegians are still mostly normal to moderately overweight, many of our visitors have fascinatingly squishy bodies.

Come all ye fat-ful

It is that time of the year again. The time when people put on another pound or two of weight which stays put. Actually, we normally put on more, but some of it leaves easily. And some does not.

Health problems related to obesity are fast becoming a global epidemic, not just in the traditional rich countries but also in the emerging economies of the Far East. Hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and arterial plaques are all more common in the clinically obese. Particularly among men, there are health risks not just from gross obesity but even from moderate overweight. (In most women, the first fat will gather on hips and thighs, where it poses little or no health risk but is very hard to get rid of. In most men, fat starts around the kidneys and guts, where it easily enters the bloodstream again, giving a higher level of cholesterol and triglycerids.)

***

So why do people grow obese, or fat, or overweight, or at least chubby? Why, because they eat too much and exercise too little of course! Oh really? Is that your final answer? Then how come some people eat all they want, exercise only moderately, and remain slim? Well, they are born that way. Yeah, but why isn’t everybody born that way? Why are most of us BORN TO BE FAT? (You know that could make a great T-shirt, right?)

The obvious answer is that it used to be useful. In temperate zones, and in tropical zones with alternating dry and wet seasons, food would be more plentiful at certain times of the year. In temperate zones, for instance, plant food would be plentiful in fall. Fruit, tubers, nuts and grains would all mature within a couple months. Some of it could be stored, but some had to be eaten before it spoiled, or before rodents got to it. Animals would also be at their fattest at the end of fall. So it was natural to meet the onset of winter gorged with fat, and then suffer hunger in spring when the plant food was gone and even the animals started to grow lean. "Survival of the fattest."

***

Today, it is always fall in the supermarket. And we can eat the fat animals without having to run them down first. But our genes still insist that the lean season will come eventually and you got to prepare. In some people, this response must be primed first. These people can exist in a state of moderate weight until they decide to get rid of some of it. So they spend several weeks in a state of artificial famine, eating two thirds of daily calorie use or less. The body, drawing on emergency plans supplied by a wise Creator (or millions of years of Evolution, or a combination of the above), concludes that it does after all live in a zone of irregular food supply. It starts to make permanent changes in the metabolism. Now calorie spending at rest is permanently lowered; the body burns with a lower flame, often making people feel slightly colder than they used to, and less energetic. At the same time, the hunger for "energy dense" food goes up. Soon, a permanent weight gain starts, and will continue until the body has reached a comfortable fat depot.

In a minority of people, there seems to be no such plateau. These poor people often start to gain weight early in childhood, and continue until the obesity becomes life threatening. This is probably an unrelated condition, and an actual illness, presumably a lack of some feedback mechanism that is present in the rest of us. I feel confident that medical research will eventually find an effective treatment. But what about the majority of us?

Somehow I am not sure there will be a pill against chubbiness anytime soon. The human body is a complex system, and there is a risk of side effects. If I have read correctly, amphetamine was used as a slimming pill for a while, until people discovered that it led to addiction and damage to body and soul.

Some time into the future, we may find the genetic profile of people who don’t gain weight, and modify the rest of us accordingly. Either chemically, changing the body chemistry to become more like that of the lean ones, or genetically for future generations. (In the hope that there will never be starvation again.) But these are not decisions to take lightly. In the meantime, I guess you could follow the example of Jehovah’s Witnesses. They don’t celebrate Christmas, Yule, or any of the corresponding midwinter feasts. I don’t know enough of them to say for sure there are no fat Witnesses, but theoretically it should help...


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