When it comes to being fat, I have plenty of history. My clothes were coming from the “Husky Boys” section by the end of elementary school. The only thing that changed as I progressed to adulthood was that I got fatter. As an adult I did try to lose weight, but it always found its way back to me. In this opinion piece I will offer observations on what has worked for me, and reasons why so many people are struggling with obesity. I’m not a scientist, so I tend to express ideas using simple terms that I can understand. My experience is based on a study of one person, me. Two if we include my wife.
If you look at photos and films from the past, up to the early 1970s, almost everyone was what today we might call skinny. While there were obese people, most were of an average, healthy weight. Then a lot of things started to change.
Women began entering the workforce in larger numbers, and the idea of a stay-at-home mom preparing dinner every night became less feasible.
Fast food franchises flourished, to the point that “getting dinner” was reduced to deciding where to pick it up on the way home from work.
Ancel Keys produced a flawed study that indicated that heart disease was caused by excess fat in the diet. Cholesterol became something to be avoided at all cost.
The US Department of Agriculture, faced with a surplus of grain, came up with the food pyramid that recommended a diet of mostly grains and very little meat.
Food manufacturers scrambled to make their products “fat-free”, using sugar to replace the absence of flavor as a result of removing fat. Traditional saturated fats, like butter and lard, were considered dangerous and we were encouraged to use polyunsaturated fats manufactured from seed oils as a replacement.
To cut costs, many manufacturers began using High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) as a replacement for sugar. This is now almost universal in the soft drink industry. Some countries have banned the use of HFCS in food, but it is still a standard ingredient in processed food in the US.
The lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic made things even worse, so that in 2024 we find that 41.9% of adults in the United States of America are classified as obese.1
How did all these factors combine to make us fat? That’s a simple question, but there is no single simple answer. A good place to start might be to look at how the human body has evolved to work. The food that keeps us going can be grouped into several broad categories:
Proteins
Proteins are found in varying amounts in many foods. They are much more abundant in animal food products, like meat, eggs, and fish. Plant foods, like grains, nuts, and seeds, have less protein and lack vitamin B12. People who practice a vegan diet usually have to take a B12 supplement. Protein is necessary for constructing muscle and other components of the body, but it does not provide fuel for energy by itself. Those who follow a carnivore diet, eating only protein from animal sources, can still thrive because of a process in the liver called gluconeogenesis. It converts protein into fuel to keep the body going. The carnivore diet can be of use to people struggling with cancer, as it deprives tumors of the glucose they need to grow.
Carbohydrates
Foods that are sweet and/or starchy fall in the carbohydrate category. The popular term for these foods is carbs. Digestion of them begins in the mouth, and in the body they get reduced to glucose. This triggers the hormone insulin, which will prepare the glucose for distribution to the cells, storing the excess as fat. The problem is that only a small amount of glucose can be put into the bloodstream at one time. Foods that are loaded with sugar, which is pretty much all commercially prepared food, contain more glucose than can be absorbed. So there is always excess. Once the first load of glucose is used up, the surplus has begun conversion to fat. That has to be converted by the liver into ketones, which takes a while. So energy levels crash. Eating a diet of mostly carbohydrates, as suggested by the pyramid above, creates a cycle of energy highs and lows. That all happens with ordinary sugar and starch.
Fructose is a different form of sugar. It’s what makes fruit taste sweet. When it comes into the body, it does not get processed in the same way as sucrose, which is what we normally think of as sugar. It goes straight to the liver and is converted into fat. This is, again, the way our bodies have evolved. At the end of summer, when fruits are ripe, bears will eat enormous amounts of fruit. The fructose they consume will become the fat that sustains them through the winter hibernation. Hummingbirds consume enormous amounts of nectar to keep their hyperactive metabolism going. The fructose they ingest is converted to fat on the fly, to keep them alive during the night when they are at rest. Our long ago ancestors did not hibernate, but the fat gained by eating fruit did keep them alive during the winter when hunting and gathering was much harder.2
Fats
Most meats come with fat, and some vegetables, like avocado, also contain fat. A popular misconception is that eating fat will make you fat. It doesn’t work like that. The human body is designed to use fat as fuel, which is why excess food is stored as fat. Eating an excess amount of fat in the diet generally does not happen, because you will feel full sooner.
Fats are classified chemically as fatty acids. This has nothing to do with how they taste. There are two general types that are usually seen in food:
Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFAs)
These are long molecules arranged in a row, like salt crystals on a pretzel stick. When heated, they become fragile and the chains break. That creates toxic compounds. Almost all of the oils sold for cooking contain PUFAs: Corn, canola, cottonseed, soybean, sunflower, and safflower are usually what you see in the store, ironically with a “Heart Healthy” label. Restaurants usually use grape seed oil or rice bran oil, both of which are PUFAs. These oils are very unstable when heated, and a lot of heat is used to create them. Some of the toxins are removed after heating, but more toxins get introduced when the final product is cleaned and deodorized with chemicals prior to being bottled.3Saturated Fatty Acids
These are mostly natural fats, such as lard, beef tallow, coconut oil, olive oil, or avocado oil. Their shorter molecular structure makes them more stable when heated, and no toxins are produced. The fat stored in your body is saturated fat, which is what we have evolved to use when food is scarce.
If you eat a diet of mostly processed food, or restaurant (including fast) food, most of your fat intake will be PUFAs. The processed food industry uses them because they are cheap. They also lead to addiction when combined with sugar and/or salt. Unstable seed oils, made even more unstable by heating, break apart and release free radicals.4 These free radicals create oxidative stress, that can damage cells. Over a long period of time, that can lead to serious health problems.
Fiber
If you eat a Standard American Diet (ironic acronym: SAD), you are getting a lot of things that are bad for your body, wrapped in high calorie creations that are very low in nutrients. These packaged or prepared products also contain very little fiber. That’s significant, because your gut is filled with bacteria that use the indigestible fiber in your food for their food. There are good and bad bacteria living down there, but when they get starved some of the good guys turn rogue and start eating the protective mucous lining, leading to leaky gut syndrome. This allows foreign particles to reach the bloodstream, which can lead to things like Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Having experienced leaky gut myself, I can testify that this is something you do not want!
The bacteria in your gut also have a huge effect on your brain, as I mentioned in a previous piece. The connection is so strong that the gut is often referred to as a second brain.5 Processed food provides little nourishment to your friendly gut bacteria, and may even promote the bad ones. This can lead to depression, or in my case, a mental “fog” that just makes everything harder.
What does this mean?
My wife and I, in our late seventies, have now been on a diet of our own creation for eight years. It’s a modified form of the ketogenic diet, popularly known as Keto. We’ve both lost weight, and are in the best health of our lives. At a time when many of our peers are struggling with obesity, arthritis, diabetes, Parkinson’s, and heart disease, we don’t even get colds. As we have adjusted our diet, we’ve also adapted a schedule of time-restricted eating. Our single daily meal, just before noon, is all we need and we are almost never hungry.
However we are retired, so our time is all our own. Prior to retirement we operated a retail store, in the “mom and pop” style. It required constant attention and long hours, so we could not possibly live the lifestyle then that we enjoy now. Most people are also busy with jobs and children, making a major dietary change difficult to impossible. They are turning to new drugs in a search for escape from obesity. The most talked-about is Ozempic, which is having near miraculous results for many. We’ll address that in part two.
https://www.forbes.com/health/weight-loss/obesity-statistics/#:~:text=Based%20on%20data%20collected%20between%202017%20and%202020%2C,children%20in%20the%20U.S.—14.7%20million%20individuals—%20have%20obesity.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/691562/nature-wants-us-to-be-fat-by-richard-j-johnson-md/
https://drcate.com/seed-oils-questions-answers-for-your-health/
https://www.livescience.com/54901-free-radicals.html