“I’m Not Fat, I Just Have Really Efficient Intestinal Bacteria!”
Or, why “just take in fewer calories than you burn” is not quite that simple.
Katsyuri sent in this Newsweek article, discussing how intestinal bacteria may affect the number of calories the body is able to absorb. More efficient bacteria = more calories absorbed = more “calories in” than average.
The calories that count are those extracted by your digestive enzymes and—as more and more research is showing—the trillions of bacteria in your intestine. People whose gut bacteria are better at digesting fats and carbs than their neighbor’s will absorb all 1,500 calories in a Friendly’s Ultimate Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt, while the neighbor will absorb fewer. So even in people with identical metabolisms, the effects of eating identical foods can be different.
The bacteria-made-me-fat idea has been gathering steam since 2006. In that year, Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University and colleagues reported in a paper in Nature that obese mice and slim mice have different populations of gut bacteria. Crucially, they showed that the bacteria caused obesity, rather than obesity producing a specific mix of bacteria.
There’s also a slideshow that touches on the connection between underprivileged communities and the prevalence of fast and processed foods (along with pictures of sad fat people… but they do have heads). Here’s Katsyuri’s disclaimer:
It’s still mainly the same old tripe about exercise and calories and that “Obesity Epidemic”, but at least it doesn’t COMPLETELY blame bigger people for everything.
The article does have some more interesting tidbits:
A study published in April… found that Japanese people harbor gut bacteria that digest nori—the seaweed in sushi—but westerners do not, probably because of the Japanese diet (lots of fish and thus marine bacteria, which digest nori). That suggests that “what you eat is proving to be one of the major determinants of…the community of bacteria living in your intestine.”
I wouldn’t be surprised to see people with nefarious motives say to people trying to lose weight, ‘you must have the wrong bacteria; I have something that will help you.’
The idea here is that gut bacteria interact with intestinal cells in a way that causes them to secrete cytokines, molecules that can cause low-grade inflammation. This inflammation can, in turn, trigger insulin resistance (the mark of type 2 diabetes) and increased appetite, which is an effective way to put on weight.
As scientists work out the details by which out gut bacteria make us fat, health mandarins need to look beyond the simplistic calories in/calories out mantra for explanations of the obesity epidemic.
So what do you think: is this kind of science—shifting the blame away from fat people—a step in the right direction? Or is the focus still in the wrong place?
[Note: The title of this post is a play on an Eric Cartman quote.]
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Cold Hard Cash, Kids, Science, TV
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I’m glad it shifts the blame away from “you’re just too lazy and eating too much” but it still implies that being fat is wrong, if less directly. And I’m concerned about the impending weight-loss antibiotics that will likely result from this.
“This inflammation can, in turn, trigger insulin resistance (the mark of type 2 diabetes) and increased appetite, which is an effective way to put on weight.”
I’m actually just glad to see something in the science that reflects what my … gut … (grin) has been telling me for years.
With all of the ooga-booga-fat-causes-diabetes-and-heart-disease-and-everything-else going on, I’ve kept saying that I think there’s something we haven’t found yet that causes both fat and diabetes as symptoms of the same unknown-other-factor.
I also fear the possible (probable) weight-loss antibiotics, but then I set this beside the recent case where a woman with life threatening digestive distress was cured by giving her some of her husband’s digestive flora (not a procedure to read about at mealtime).
If they could actually prove which of the many bacteria in my system causes my insulin resistance, and could stop me from becoming the 7th person in my immediate family to have full-blown diabetes, I’d jump on it in a heartbeat.
If the cost of getting my blood-sugar under control is not eating any grains, so be it. If the cost of keeping my blood-sugar under control is having to ask for help to move furniture… much cursing will be heard, but so be it. (I don’t care what size I am, I’m actually annoyed at losing weight getting my blood-sugar under control, because now the furniture outweighs me and I have to ask for help to move things.)
If a highly tailored antibiotic or probiotic would make the whole problem go away, for me and every one else facing the specter of this illness, not only so be it, but sign me up.
Japanese people also have a high incidence of stomach cancer and eat 25% fewer calories on average than Americans (check the stats on the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization site). This seems to be oversimplifying the picture considerably in order to make a point about factors aside from calories.
It may be that bacteria plays a role, but it’s rather hard to ignore the fact that countries where people eat less on average, they weigh less and where they eat more, they have bigger obesity rates.
I have to wonder if this is what fat acceptance is all about. Is it about saying “it’s not our fault that we’re fat”, or is it about saying, “it doesn’t matter if we’re fat” because we have just as much value and deserve as much respect as others and that body size is not a determiner of human value. Rather than spending time trying to invalidate dieting, arguing that we don’t really eat more than others, or whatever, shouldn’t the focus be on the larger issue (no pun intended)?
This has “Selling more pro-biotic yogurts, and supplements” written ALL OVER IT! Also, nice reference to Cartman.
Rather than spending time trying to invalidate dieting, arguing that we don’t really eat more than others, or whatever, shouldn’t the focus be on the larger issue (no pun intended)?
When I focus on civil rights, I get told I’m wasting resources and should stop eating so much and start exercising.
When I say I do exercise and eat foods other than donuts, I get told that I’m just trying to prove it’s not my fault I’m fat.
It’s not a fight that can be won.
Just so you know, Screaming Fat Girl, in China the average person eats, on average, 270 calories more per day than in the U.S., and they have almost no “obesity.”
@Screaming Fat Girl
It would be nice if we could just focus on how it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) matter if we’re fat, but that’s not the reality of the western (American, Canadian, Australian, UK) cultures in which many FA bloggers live. When you’re told repeatedly that if you “just ate right” or weren’t so lazy you’d look “normal”, I think there’s a lot of value in understanding that people come in a variety of different sizes for a variety of different reasons. Americans in particular tend to have an unnatural focus on personal responsibility/not being a drag on other people; if obesity is perceived to be the fault of the individual, then people feel justified in being hateful towards fat people.
Also what Meowser said.
The human body is mostly composed of cells that are not actually human, like our intestinal bacteria. This isn’t blame-shifting, it’s part of the picture of how we use energy (i.e. food) in the human system. I don’t think it’s necessarily well written or presented, but it is factual and informative.
It is helpful to know the reasons why one person may be fat and another thin eating the same diet and exercising the same amount, but at the same time it serves to cast fat as something that needs fixing.
This study for instance is just going to feed into the diet and medical industries obsession with selling us things to ‘fix’ us, with absolutely no proof that it either works or is safe.
Also, particularly in America, any attempt to show that the old “doughnuts and sitcoms” model of fat people is just going to be blown off as an excuse, a lie someone tells to get them out of doing something they don’t want to do because they’re lazy.
It’s really a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation.
Bacteria has maybe evolved in the last 30 or 40 years – explaining why the percentage of obese individuals in the population has exploded.
I know losing weight can be difficult (been there, done that) but the attitude that being obese (as in commentators who say they weigh 300+ pounds)is perfectly healthy is just River in Egypt time. Geeez.
Well, even though I’m not jumping for joy, I still think that more accurate info will help us move to a better place as far as treating diseases, as opposed to ‘treating’ weight. Knowing more about *how* bacteria affect things may help to correct faulty conclusions, like the whole ‘weight loss surgery cures type II diabetes in days!’ thing. (If high blood sugars and insulin resistance get reversed withing DAYS of the surgery, it’s not weight loss that’s causing the change, it’s gut stuff. However, this hasn’t stopped scalpels from being recommended as a cure-all.)
I’m sure that there’ll be an Activia for weight loss (with all sorts of scary attendant side effects), but I’m still hopeful that shifting blame from us fat folks is a small step towards shifting the blame from fat, and separating correlation from causation when it comes to treating diseases.
what’s needed is a way to tip that balance and thereby lose weight, rather than lose weight and thereby tip the balance of gut bacteria.
This article deserves props for putting it the right way around for a change.
It should be the altering of the metabolic factors that lead to fatness, or thinness if that’s a problem for you and weight change should flow from that whilst you get on living your life.
I must admit I don’t quite get why learning more about how our bodies work = fat is bad.
Stormy’s comment helps to illustrate that you sometimes cannot seperate weight from other effects that might be undesired.
Even if only for that reason alone, knowledge must progress.
Knowledge is power.
To perhaps clarify my initial comment.
In my mind the two issues are divorced. If finding the correct bacterial balance would remove the threat of diabetes, I would do it in a heartbeat, no matter WHAT it did to my weight.
Shrinking me to 100 #s or making me gain to any size still capable of walking. I wouldn’t care if they could completely remove the fear of the more frightening diabetic complications. (Blindness, amputation, coma, helplessness)
This article is problematic to me for two reasons. First, it challenges the “just take in less calories than you burn” mantra — yet it doesn’t say that these efficient bacteria are CREATING calories. There is a percentage of calories eaten that is actually absorbed, and this “fattening” bacteria can only release 100% of the calories eaten, not more. There is no effect of eating a 1,500 calorie diet yet absorbing 2,000 calories.
The second is this statement: “So even in people with identical metabolisms, the effects of eating identical foods can be different.” Whoa, what if people DON’T have identical metabolisms? Is the bacterial effect null and void?
It seems to me that it’s still calories in vs. calories out – but just that as ketosis affects calories out, this affects calories in. The law of thermodynamics isn’t “total food content in the mouth vs. total number of miles walked in a day” after all.
People with more efficient digestive systems would need to eat food with less caloric content than those with less efficient digestive systems, just as a more fuel efficient car needs less gasoline. Excess calories will be stored on the body, as always.
Why thank you Rena! It is totally my pleasure to be in denial of outright lies, half-truths, and oversimplifications. I fervently hope I can continue to be so.
If the cut-off point for obesity has been made smaller (which it has), the population of obese people will explode even if no one’s weight changes.
Also, for some people, 300 pounds is a healthier weight than weighing half that much. BMIs were meant to apply to populations. Applying it to individuals is something of a statistical fraud.
The body is more efficient t extracting calories from food if it determines you’re underweight; I wonder if this affects how hospitable the gut is toward various bacteria?