I’ve got a fat cold
Found this over at Forbes.com (story here). It seems that some researchers think that obesity may have SOME charactaristics that are passed virally. They found this by studying fat chickens (apparently those are the ones that they serve at all those places that have 12oz chicken breast platters as I have never seen a normal chicken have 12oz breasts) Anyway, they seems to think there may be a viral componenent that makes fat cells fatter.
“Obesity is a complex, chronic disease,” noted lead researcher Leah D. Whigham, a research scientist in the department of nutritional sciences at the University of Wisconsin. “There are lots of factors contributing to the broad epidemic, but because of the rate of increase, it is very possible that it is partially due to an infectious disease.”
Such news is not new, but it is interesting. Long term though I still contend that we may all have genetic predispositions to things, but some of them we can change / avoid. We may be predisposed to get diabetes, but with proper diet and excersise that can be avoid. We may be predisposed to heart diease, alcoholism, etc, but again they can be avoided via proper living and lifestyle choices. So, in the same way we may be predisposed to be fat, we may even get the fat virus at some point, but we need not become, or stay, that way. Just because I catch a cold does not mean I have to cough and sneeze forever.
Understand, I am not just preaching the choir here as I am personally working at this time to loose weight, and it is working, but it is a slow and steady process.
