What if Being Fat Is Not Your Fault?

[Christa]

America's Obesity Epidemic May Be Fueled by Chemicals in Everyday Products

Chemicals called 'obesogens' are in our food, cars and homes, according to recent scientific studies -- and they may be making us fat.


/snip

Certainly this research doesn't mean that all cases of obesity are the result of chemicals and that factors like diet and exercise aren't important. They still are. But especially for younger kids who are growing up in an increasingly more toxic environment, these chemicals may be all around them (and their moms during pregnancy).

Let's take a look at some of these chemicals.

The "plasticizer" phthalates for instance, are so ubiqutous that an estimated 1 billion pounds are produced each year worldwide. The Environmental Working Group reports that phthalates are found in "toys, food packaging, hoses, raincoats, shower curtains, vinyl flooring, wall coverings, lubricants, adhesives, detergents, nail polish, hair spray and shampoo."

PCBs were used as coolants and lubricants in electric equipment and have also been added to plastics, inks, adhesives, paints, and flame retardants. PCBs are not only into the products we buy but is in the air and water, and many people are exposed to them through eating certain kinds of fish -- especially the ones highest on the food chain.

Bisphenol A (or BPA) is often found in hard plastics, including baby bottles, food-storage containers, water coolers, dental fillings, the lining inside canned goods, sports equipment, CDs, sunglasses ... the list goes on.

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/143036/what_if_being_fat_is_not_your_fault_america%27s_obesity_epidemic_may_be_fueled_by_chemicals_in_everyday_products?page=entire

[bread_and_roses]

1. I'm waiting to see what our resident fat-people-haters have to say

with their mantra of self-control, inputs and outputs, etc. I have seen this trend in my own family, and in my own mind connect it with the ridiculously young age of pre-puberty in girls. Obesity in such large numbers of children is abnormal - and I have seen it repeatedly in children with high activity levels and no more "unhealthy" a diet than when I was growing up.

[Quantess]

6. Eh...very few children have high activity levels these days.

I'm not discounting the story. I think the obesity epidemic can be partially attribted to food additives. But, there is no getting around the increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and the increasingly large food portions.

[bread_and_roses]

7. No doubt true, but the two I'm thinking of specifically DO

Both, in fact, are probably diagnosable as at least "borderline" "hyperactive" (both are also girls) but have parents who choose to use coping and teaching strategies rather than medication (and lucky enough for those to suffice - I am not slamming parents who choose otherwise). The point being that they are rarely not engaged in some sort of motion, even when doing sedentary activities like watching TV. And both sets of parents keep them as active as possible, out of self-preservation if nothing else.

Now, I am well aware that anecdote is not proof, but given a hypothesis with demonstratable, verifiable, repeatable experimental back-up, which this seems to be, anecdote can be illustrative.

These high rates of childhood obesity are NOT normal, and I seriously doubt can be attributed solely to changes in activity levels and fast food consumption. Do people seriously think that kids didn't park themselves in front of the TV for hours on end in the 60's? Or were not served meals heavy on meat and saturated fat, light on vegitables, and often out of a box like "hamburger helper?" In many families, desert every night was also served - cake, pie, ice cream.

And certainly the very early onset of pubescence in girls who's mothers were entering the same stage three to five years later cannot, I think be explained by conventional dietary analysis. Certainly most of their mothers had quite sufficient calories and nutrients for properly staged development, so we are not dealing with a situation like, say, right after the depression, when many children suffered from malnutrition.

[msongs]

2. if these are the causes then everyone who eats these things should be overweight not just a

self selecting group.

Msongs

[RC]

4. Not necessarily.

People react to various combinations of things differently. Also there is some proof that some obesity may be caused by a virus.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

8. or genetic?

[elocs]

3. My best friend of over 30 years is morbidly obese. At 5'6" he has been near 300 pounds

for most of those years. That extra 100 pounds + put him on disability in his late 50s, caused him to need both hips replaced, as well as both knees. He is now 73 and although he manages to hobble around he has never had a heart attack. In fact in all the years I have known him the only times he has been in the hospital is when he had the hip and knee replacements. I am of near normal weight and what would amaze people is that my friend does not eat any more than I do.

My friend's biggest problem is that he lives on the wrong continent or in the wrong century. Apparently his body is very good at conserving calories while burning very few because he puts on weight but does not lose it. His morbid obesity may eventually kill him but in the decades I've known him I have never known him to be an overeater and his home is not full of junk food. So to me his obesity is a mystery.

[Name removed]

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