The fatter we become the greater our desire to blame that
fatness on something — anything — other than eating too
much and moving too little. The entire gazillion-dollar diet book
industry is based on this premise and people keep buying the
nonsense it offers notwithstanding that no book has ever made a
dent on the obesity epidemic.
But diet gurus are just part of a massive industry that exploits
our frailties. Others have blamed “obesity genes” for our
porked-out population, notwithstanding that the U.S. gene pool has
barely changed during the massive girth growth of the last few
decades. And never mind the mass of data indicating we just keep
consuming more calorieswhile almost certainly expending fewer.
Now researchers who have long been on the warpath against
synthetic chemicals have “discovered” that, after repeated and
failed attempts to find these compounds guilty of everything from
lowered sperm counts to shrunken alligator penises, these chemicals
are the source of pot bellies and thunder thighs. They’ve prompted
such headlines as “Chemicals May Play Role in Rise in Obesity”
(Washington Post), “Exposure in the Womb to
Certain Chemicals May Lead to Obesity” (The Economist) and “Chemicals Could Be the
Cause of Obesity” (The
Telegraph of London).
Praise the Lord and pass the alimentation!
Leading the way is University of Missouri-Columbia biologist
Frederick vom Saal, who has sought for much of
his career to pin an evil tail on the industrial chemical donkey,
especially
one called bisphenol-A (BPA). About 2 billion pounds of BPA is used
yearly in the U.S. to make coatings that line food and drink
containers and plastics we drink from including baby bottles.
BPA is considered a weak estrogen agonist, which in English means that
for better or ill it has the potential to affect our hormonal
systems. Most hormones in our bodies, such as estradiol and
testosterone, come from our glands. Some of us receive large doses
in medicines like contraceptive pills or testosterone patches.
After that comes exposure from plant foods (phytoestrogens), such as flax seed, soy, garlic, olive
oil, green beans, and corn. Finally, we get tiny amounts from
synthetic chemicals like BPA.
Back in 1997 vom Saal published a rodent study in which he claimed two different
extremely low doses of BPA given pregnant females caused prostate
enlargement in offspring. It received tremendous attention because
voluminous studies at much higher doses showed no ill effects from
BPA and the best-known tenet of toxicology is “the dose makes the
poison.” Anything is poisonous at a high enough level; nothing is
poisonous at a low enough level. Vom Saal’s findings stood that
rule on its head, as if declaring children least exposed to sugar
had the most cavities.
But vom Saal’s test groups comprised a pathetic seven mice
apiece. Subsequent studies duplicating his techniques yet using
many times more mice found no prostate enlargement; none had to
urinate in the middle of the night.
Health agencies including the FDA, that of the European Union,
Germany specifically, and Japan, have refused to rein in use of the
chemical. The website of Germany’s version of the FDA, the BfR,
declares: “Following careful checking of all the
studies, in particular those studies in the low dose range
of bisphenol A, the BfR carried out a scientific assessment of the
results and came to the conclusion that the presence of BPA in
polycarbonate bottles poses no health risk to babies and infants
during normal use.” (Emphasis added.)
Nevertheless, vom Saal become a darling of the media and
environmentalists not because of his proof but because of his
conclusions. So it matters not to them that he hasn’t actually
published much of anything on the BPA-obesity link. A few published
studies by others have shown theoretically how a hormone disruptor
might lead to fatness but absolutely nothing more.
Going against this hypothesis are over 500 published
studies of the effects of BPA on rodents. Routinely the animals in
these are weighed. Finding a BPA-obesity link is as easy as getting
a research assistant to spend a day going through these studies on
the MedLine database. But that would produce facts, and facts must
be ignored when they countervail a convenient theory.
This doesn’t get chemicals off the hook for causing obesity. All
food is made of chemicals, whether natural or synthetic or both.
Cut back on these and you’ll lose weight. That’s not exactly the
message the synthetic chemical alarmists want to send, but it has
the minor virtue of being true.
