Anita Leslie

NUT 3400
Professor Cyndi Dormer
16 April 2012
Environmental Pollution Might Be To Blame for Those Last Ten Pounds You Cant Lose
You are what you eat might be more than just a clich, especially in todays modern
world full of chemicals. As the global obesity epidemic worsens, it is imperative that we
understand why so many of us are getting fatter and fatter and what can be done about it. There
is more to weight loss than just decreased caloric intake and increased physical activity. What is
in the food you eat may be as important as how much of the food you eat.
There is a serious contradiction that exists in todays society that says a person needs to
be thin and beautiful in order to be successful and happy. This is reinforced in the media.
However, that same media also promotes fast food, processed food, medications and other
chemical solutions on an hourly basis. Then we are deluged with news reports and reality shows
and talk shows that discuss the obesity epidemic and show pictures of morbidly obese people.
There is a predominant thinking that if these people just ate less and moved more it would solve
the problem. Its just not that simple.
There are nefarious substances in our food that dont show up in the ingredient list.
Things like polychlorinated bipheyls, dibenzofurans, dioxins and organochlorine pesticides.
Consumers without chemistry degrees have no idea what is entering their body via their food.
Some of these things leach into food from their plastic containers. Some are sprayed on food as
fungicides during the growing process. Humans, at the top of the food chain, get a chemical
overload in their food when they eat meat, fish or dairy that comes from animals that have
ingested chemicals. While there are other ways for these contaminants to enter a body, food is
the main source of these persistent organic pollutants (POPs).
Persistent is one of the important words in that name. These poisons take a long time to
metabolize in the body and there is a tendency for them to accumulate in greater quantities over
time, amplifying the effects. It is these effects that can influence weight gain. POPs can lead to
more abdominal fat because of how they affect hormones and how those hormones signal for fat
distribution, and extra fat in the abdominal region is a known risk factor for diseases such as
diabetes and heart disease. In as study examining NHANES data from 1999-2000, it was very
interesting that POPs seem to be flip-flopping how the genders store fat. Typically men have
more of an apple shape and store their fat in the abdomen whereas woman tend to have more of a
pear shape and store their fat in the hips, thighs and buttocks. But the hormonal effect of the
pollutants can reverse that. That might sound good for the men, but can be bad news for the
women.
Other deleterious effects of POPs include an increase in insulin resistance, impairing both
insulin secretion and action, as well as cell toxicity, as most of these substances are proven
carcinogens. This can be a double whammy for people who are already obese and at increased
risk for diabetes and cancer. POPs found in fish can also negate the positive effects of omega3
fatty acids that are considered good for a persons brain. POPs can also contribute to
inflammation in the body, another risk factor for heart disease and diabetes.
It seems obvious that pollution in the body would be bad for a person and could lead to
disease but not so obvious how it could make one fat. European studies have led to conclusions
that POPs affect fat cell signaling and that POP exposure influences the expression of genes that
are critical in lipid homeostasis regulation. This means that the pollutants mess with how the
body is supposed to work to have just the right amount of fat, rather than too much. A study done
in California further explains how the chemicals can mimic estrogens and cause the body to
make more fat cells. Possibly the most disturbing study involved hexachlorobenzene, a pesticide
that appeared to cause a significant weight gain even on 50% less food, compared to the control
animals who had full rations.
The body does its best to deal with these pollutants, choosing to store them in the fatty
tissue, otherwise known as adipose tissue. This is a double-edged sword. An obese person can
somewhat safely store more pollutants because they have more adipose tissue, but obesity can
increase the half-life of these carcinogens, once again adding to the persistence of the problem.
But by storing them in fat cells, the vital organs and blood supply are somewhat protected from
the pollution. Also the concentration of POPs is diluted amongst many fat cells in an obese
person, meaning that no one adipocyte has an overwhelming amount of the contaminants.
This leads to an interesting paradox. Is it better to be fat or thin if you have a lot of POPs
in your body? Mortality studies among the elderly show a protective effect from obesity in
populations with strong exposure to POPs. If you live somewhere with low exposure, which is
becoming more rare all the time, you dont need the extra fat, but if you live somewhere with
high exposure, you actually have a lower mortality risk if you are carrying extra weight, in which
to somewhat safely store the pollutants.
This leads to the conundrum of whether or not to lose the weight. By reducing the size of
the individual adipocytes, you increase the concentration of pollution in each one. This can be
toxic. It can also lead to weight cycling, where a person loses weight, only to regain it, and then
diets more to lose more weight and then regains it. When a toxic person loses weight and the
concentration of pollution is higher, the body wants to regain the weight to dilute the toxic effect
once again. The body does not want the toxins in vital organs or in the bloodstream but prefers to
keep them in the fatty tissues, but studies have shown a correlation between weight loss and
increased POPs in the blood. A study of gastric-bypass patients was especially revealing,
showing how POPs released during weight loss slowed a persons resting metabolic rate and led
to less oxidative enzyme action in skeletal muscles. So it becomes a balancing act between
obesity and toxicity. A persons metabolic rate already will slow with weight loss, just due to
less mass requiring less energy for basic bodily functions, but now the POPs are lowering energy
expenditures even more and decreasing the benefits of weight loss.
These chemicals can cause problems with a whole host of bodily functions, interfering
with thyroid hormones, sex hormones, corticosteroids, hunger regulators, insulin, dopamine and
serotonin, among others. This can lead to changes in appetite and how the fats, carbohydrates
and proteins are metabolized. It is a whole new world with over 80% of the NHANES population
showing a presence of at least some of these POPs. Regulations to restrict the use of many of
these substances have been in place for years, but exposure to these chemicals lasts for a long
time and does not just affect the person who was personally exposed, but is carried on from one
generation to the next. Just as smoking during pregnancy can lead to obesity in the offspring,
exposure to POPs has an obesity effect on the offspring.
The news seems depressing and one might be tempted to draw the morbid conclusion that
obesity is at least a relatively slow death and it is better to store the toxins safely in excess fat
cells than to die early from cancer due to exposure to POPs. It is easy to be pessimistic and
assume that the chemicals are everywhere and there is nothing one can do about it so just eat,
drink and be merry for tomorrow you will die. But if you are not ready to give up and accept that
fate, there are steps you can take to be part of the solution.
For starters, examine your diet and see where you can cut down on pollution in your
food. Avoiding processed foods that are full of chemicals and that are stored in plastic is a good
step. Choosing organic food, that was grown in the cleanest soil possible, or fed the least
contaminated food, and that was not given hormones or antibiotics, will cut down on your toxic
exposure. Use natural cleaning products whenever possible. Look for natural hygiene products or
use less of them if you can. Exercise to sweat out toxins and to strengthen your heart and
immune system so that your body can better tolerate what toxins it has. Also, if you are
attempting to lose weight, do it slowly and sensibly, in order to give your body time to adjust to
the level of toxicity and make sure exercise is a component in order to help get the toxins out of
your body. Last but not least, educate yourself on the topic in order to intelligently pass the
information along to family and friends so they can adjust their lifestyles accordingly.
As people begin to make these changes, and make choices in their consumer habits based
on lowering their exposure to toxins, hopefully companies with forward-thinking marketing
departments will jump on the bandwagon and start catering to a public who wants cleaner, more
natural products. In the meantime, dont stress about those last ten pounds and certainly dont
judge your neighbor who is obese, remembering that there are a lot of factors that come into play
to make and/or keep a person overweight.
There also needs to be further study into this matter, but some of the challenges are that
there are so many different chemicals involved it seems a daunting task to study not only the
effects of each one, but also the combined effects of all of them. And there is the issue of how
different chemicals affect different people. It is a huge task and studying the synergistic effect of
all the chemicals might prove to be impossible, but anything we can find out that would sway
public policy and make new regulations concerning some of the most dangerous chemicals
would be good.






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