A new major scientific review has stated that the rise in obesity amongst the general population is caused to a large extent by environmental pollution and not just by over-eating.
The review looked at evidence outlined by more than 40 scientists and involving 1,400 studies and was published in the peer-reviewed journal Biochemical Pharmacology and found strong evidence that ''obesogens'', the chemicals that contribute to obesity, were involved to a large extent in increasing rates of overweightness.
Lead author Dr. Jerrold Heindel told The Guardian:
"The focus of the clinical people is on calories – if you eat more calories, you'reyou're going to be more fat. So they wait untill you get obese, then they'llthey'll look at giving you diets, drugs, or surgery. If that really worked, we should see a decline in the rates of obesity. But we don'tdon't – obesity continues to rise, especially in children. The real question is, why do people eat more? The obesogenic paradigm focuses on that and provides data that indicate that these chemicals are what can do that."
It is said that obesogens upset the body'sbody's metabolism making it easier to gain weight and harder to lose weight. These obesogens are found in transport pollution, food packaging, pesticides and in plastics. Meaning that they are almost impossible to avoid in the modern world.
Prof Robert Lustig at the University of California, San Francisco, another lead author said:
"It turns out chemicals dumped in the environment have these side effects, because they make the cells do things that they wouldn'twouldn't otherwise have done, and one of those things is laying down fat. Studies showed that in utero and early-life exposures were the most sensitive times, because this irreversibly altered programming of various parts of the metabolic system, increasing susceptibility for weight gain. We'veWe've got four or five chemicals that also will cause transgenerational epigenetic obesity."
Prof Barbara Corkey, at Boston University School of Medicine and past president of the Obesity Society, has said that she supports the findings, stating:
"The initial worldview was that obesity is caused by eating too much and exercising too little. And this is nonsense. It's not the explanation because all of the creatures on Earth, including humans, eat when they're they're hungry and stop when they are full. Every cell in the body knows if you have enough food"
Adding:
"People who are overweight and obese go to tremendous extremes to lose weight and the diet industry has fared extremely well. We've learned that doesn't work. When the medical profession doesn't understand something, we always blame patients and unfortunately, people are still being held responsible for [obesity]." 1
[Based on reporting by: The Guardian]
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