Fast Food Obesity Linked to Reduced Sensitivity to Fat

July 19, 2010

Weight Loss News

Nationwide obesity rates are rising sky high. Even worldwide obesity rates are growing. News paper critics laughed at the notion of an obesity epidemic. I understand them, you can’t quite call it an epidemic because it’s not what it literally is. But it does manifest as an epidemic. Almost one in three Americans is obese and 2 in 3 are overweight. This is alarming, actually it’s way past alarming, it’s dangerous.

The problem is that being overweight is now considered normal if you take into account the definition of normal:” a: according with, constituting, or not deviating from a norm, rule, or principle b : conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern” .

Nowadays the regular standard or pattern seems to be obesity. This is not good.

One major factor contributing to the obesity epidemic is addiction. Most of the foods that we like and that get us fat are addictive. And they were manufactured to be addictive. The more we like it the more we eat. The more we eat, the more profit they make. And the vicious cycle goes on and on.

It seems that fat has become the XXI century drug of choice. We can’t seem to stop lusting for cheeseburgers, hot dogs and French fries. And to wash it all down a bottle of cola or energy drinks.

But as with most drugs, the more you consume, the more you need. The body becomes num to the active substance and so you need more of it to achieve the same pleasure as when you started. It’s the same with fat.

A team led by Professor Christine Feinle-Bisset from the University of Adelaide from Australia decided to analyze the human body’s capacity to taste and discover fat.

What Christine did was take two groups. One made out of obese people and one out of slim healthy weighing people. She gave each of them a cup of water with a small amount of fat mixed in it. She then repeated the test over and over but slightly adding more and more fat each time. The purpose of the test was to see at which amount can the test subjects taste and identify the fat in the drink.

And now the results

She discovered that the obese subjects couldn’t taste the fat as fast as the slim subjects. It took a higher concentration of fat for them to taste it. These results have led Christine to state:” We found that being obese was associated with a reduced ability to detect fat taste, and with reduced release of an appetite-suppressing gut hormone."

Same as all the popular XXth century drugs. The more you consume, the more you need. And it all soon becomes a habit.

The good news is that you can stop the vicious cycle anytime you want. It might take a while and a little effort, but the end results are well worth it. You can’t put a price on health, and only once you don’t have it anymore does it become so precious for you

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