Many believe excessive weight gain to be due to laziness and greed. This is based on a propaganda model created by the food industry. In order to convince the public that their food is safe, the food industry must claim that any food eaten to excess causes weight gain. This hides the fact that it is their low quality poisonous junk foods that are the real cause of obesity. So what evidence is there that obesity (obesity disease) is actually a metabolic disorder caused by low quality foods?
1. Overfeeding Doesn’t Cause Obesity Disease
When you overfeed healthy individuals high quality foods they do not become fat. Many overfeeding studies have been performed, and only those that feed sugary foods are able to cause excess fat accumulation. Ad libitum access to normal healthy food results in a natural energy homeostasis, that balances energy expenditure and intake based on fluctuations in daily activity and feeding patterns. Try to get fat on tuna fish and beans. You won’t be able to.
2. Obesity Disease Is Characterised By Insulin Resistance
Insulin resistance is the insensitivity of the insulin receptor to the hormone insulin. In the obesity disease, despite insulin being released to the blood, it is ineffective at causing the cellular uptake of glucose. Reversing this insulin resistance through high quality nutrition causes body composition improvements. However, calorie restriction does not. Feeding fructose or sugar to animals and humans causes insulin resistance within a few weeks.
3. Dieting Damages Metabolism
If laziness and greed were the causes of obesity, then dieting and exercise would reverse the condition. However, this is not the case. Obese individuals who undergo exercise or dieting lose weight, but a large proportion of this is muscle. This lowers the metabolic rate and possibly causes permanent damage to thyroid hormone metabolism. The obesity disease does not respond to exercise and diet because it is caused by factors other than excess energy intake.
4. Abdominal Obesity Disease
Abdominal fat is not normal fat. It is fat lain down around the vital organs especially the liver. This fat is not available as a source of energy because it does not result from normal metabolic energy storage pathways. Instead it is caused by fructose induced hepatic insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction. The development of non-alcoholic fatty liver therefore is a characteristic of obesity and strongly implicates poor diet in the formation of the obesity disease.
5. Leptin Resistance And The Obesity Disease
Obesity and excess weight gain is associated with leptin resistance. Leptin is a hormone that normally signals the hypothalamus to provide information regarding the degree of adiposity. When the hypothalamus becomes leptin resistant the fat stores are believed to be low. Exercise and calorie restriction under these circumstances causes countermeasures aimed at decreasing energy expenditure. High quality food reverse the insensitivity of the hypothalamus to leptin.
RdB