Fat // Current

Portly pets compete in slimming contest

Eight of Britain's fattest pets are to embark on a 100-day diet and fitness regime in a bid to crowned this year's pet... more

WeekendAutopsy
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Fat Activism goes BIG

By bridging performance and academia these Bay Area activists are bringing attention to fat bodies and then asking, so? But their... more

travisdmathews
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Why Japan worried about getting FAT?

What's the Future of Food? Will there be a solutions?

mashdata
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Love handles increase risk of early death

A study of almost 360,000 people from nine European countries has resulted in some fairly shocking news. Love handles, and extra... more

ClareW
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Canadian prisoner, too fat for cell, released early

Canadian prison authorities were forced to release a 450-pound (205 kg) drug gang member this week because he was too large for... more

IMMININT
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Size does matter, bigger girls get more jiggy

According to a new research study which surveyed 7,000 women, those that are overweight get more action in the sack, proving that... more

mattbrawn
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Dieting Tips: fighting belly fat by eating?

Talking on the early show Liz Vaccariello (Editor in Chief) said there are two types of belly fat: 1) Subcutaneous is the fat... more

ilikepretty
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5 things that have been found in fat people's skin folds

Fat people have a knack for being really really fat. And sometimes they get so fat that objects get caught in the folds in their... more

toshiba
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World's Fattest man gets married

Manuel Uribe, who hasn't left his bed in six years, married his longtime girlfriend Claudia Solis on Sunday in northern Mexico.

chestergoat
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White adults more often see weight discrimination

Obese white adults are more likely than their thinner peers to say they've been discriminated against in their daily lives, a... more

DoubleHeadedEagle
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World's Heaviest Man to Get Married

World's heaviest man will marry his long-time girlfriend later this month in Mexico. The groom weighs nearly 700 pounds and... more

toreyray
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600-Pound Man Rescued from His Home

A man who weighs an estimated 600 pounds has been rescued from his Long Island home after falling and struggling alone for two... more

ebindelglass
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Mexico's fattest man dies of heart attack

One of the world's fattest men - who weighed an estimated 450 kilos - has died of a heart attack in Mexico. Morbidly obese... more

regisb
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990lb man Jose Luis Garza dies after bedroom rescue drama

A vastly overweight Mexican man was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital after emergency workers were forced to demolish his... more

SilenceNoMore
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Obesity boom will cost tax payers

Rising obesity levels are set to drain local health and public service budgets, which will mean higher taxes for all. Obesity... more

JanaPokana
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New twist in brain obesity riddle

The discovery of another way in which the body appears to control how much it eats could shed fresh light on obesity.

bmltv
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Fat couple 'too heavy for plane to take off'

A pair of holidaymakers were hungry to discover that they would not be allowed to board their plane, because their combined bulk... more

rwylie
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Fattest man to get married

The world's fattest man, Manuel Uribe, has announced he will get married this month, after losing nearly half his original... more

JanaPokana
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Fat dolphins go on diet

Dolphins at a marine park in Japan have to go on a new diet and exercise regime after developing pot bellies and failing to hit... more

JanaPokana
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Too Good to Be True?: Fat That Keeps You Thin

Scientists have stumbled on a chemical in the body that could one day prevent or reverse diseases linked to obesity.

Researchers at Harvard University's School of Public Health (H.S.P.H.) report in Cell that palmitoleate, a newly discovered hormone produced by fat cells, is also a fatty acid. (Most hormones are proteins.) They believe that if they can increase its production, they may be able to stave off metabolic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease (caused by hardening of the arteries) and so-called fatty liver, an often asymptomatic disease that can lead to damage of the organ as well as cancer. They speculate that it may also aid in weight loss.

But how could fats help trim the portly—or at least avoid accompanying diseases?

"The homemade meal is always the healthiest and best tasting meal," says study co-author Gökhan Hotamisligil, a professor of genetics and metabolism at H.S.P.H. "Similarly, the best kind of fat is the kind that you produce on your own from your fat tissue."

He says researchers discovered palmitoleate's potential thinning power by engineering mice that did not have proteins responsible for shuttling dietary fat to storage fat cells (often found around the abdomen, thighs and other places familiar to cellulite hosts). The animals ate like pigs, so to speak, but remained lean, free of metabolic disease, and showed no sign of fat deposits on their livers or insulin resistance. (Resistance to insulin—a hormone produced in the pancreas—causes sugar to accumulate in the blood instead of being taken up the muscle, which can result in type 2 diabetes.)

Hotamisligil says the team traced the hormone to fat cells when they were trying to figure out why these mice had so many fat molecules in their blood. Normally, excess of fatty acids in the bloodstream end up in the muscle and liver—and eventually affect insulin-sensing cells, causing diabetes.

"Fat is a huge soup of many many chemical entities," Hotamisligil says. "You can't treat fat like one kind of thing. It's a combination of many different kinds of molecules—the composition of [the] soup is important."

Palmitoleate is involved in a process known as de novo lipogenesis, the production of fat molecules by fat cells. The naturally made fat, he explains, appears to have the opposite effect of fat from food: It actually keeps fat from accumulating on the liver and thwarts insulin resistance. He noted that whereas the healthy rats had lots of palmitoleate in their fat reserves, diabetic mice do not. The mechanism by which palmitoleate works, however, has yet to be figured out.

"If you can replenish that source [of palmitoleate] or find a way to activate fat cells to produce more of their own fat, this could end up helping people with obesity, diabetes and fatty liver disease," says Hotamisligil.

He warns that high palmitoleate levels may only guard against metabolic illness and not obesity itself. Although he cannot be certain that the hormone has the same effect on humans, he does note that the pathways involved in mice and humans are almost identical.

In an editorial accompanying the Cell article, endocrinologist Jerrold Olefsky of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine points out: "Earlier studies have indicated that the capacity of human [fat cells] for de novo biosynthesis of fatty acids is considerably less than in rodent models." More work has to be done, he says, to determine if higher palmitoleate levels coincide with less metabolic disease in humans, as well.Scientists have stumbled on a chemical in the body that could one day prevent or reverse diseases linked to obesity. ... more