What If It’s Actually A Virus Turning Us All Into Fat Lardbuckets?
THIS sounds like a very odd theory, that it’s actually a virus that is turning us all into fat lardbuckets. But while it’s an odd theory there’s enough evidence out there that we should at least consider it seriously. Not to the point that we just assume that it’s correct of course: but to the point where we investigate more to see if it might be true.
Coughs, sneezes and a runny nose are not the worst a bad cold can do to you – it might also make you fat.
Scientists believe a virus behind the common cold could have fuelled the obesity epidemic that has swept the developed world. The culprit? A contagious bug called adenovirus 36.
Experts told the European Congress on Obesity in Sofia that eating and exercise habits haven’t changed enough to explain why people worldwide started piling on weight at around the same time.
There’s two serious points behind this.
The first is that those public health people have managed to get dietary advice horribly wrong once already over the past 40 years. They’ve all been off telling us that animal fats are the work of the very devil and that we should all ditch the lard, the bacon, the dripping, and have vegetable oils as well. It’s exactly that that has led to all those processed foods being full of salt and sugar: you’ve got to put something in them to make them taste of anything that without animal fats that’s all you can do.
And, of course, the same public health people are currently blaming our being lardbuckets on all that salt and sugar in processed foods. And then it has just been pointed out that there’s no link whatsoever between animal fats and heart attacks. Nada, zip, zilch.
So they’ve definitely been wrong before and thus they might be wrong now, blaming our all being fat on sugar and the like.
And then there’s the second point. Which is that we continually find out that more and more things are a result of viruses and bacterial infections. For example ulcers were thought to be the result of stress: then an Aussie bloke decided (and yes, he was called Bruce) that it must be a bacterial infection. He drank a pot of the bacteria, got ulcers, cured himself with the correct antibiotic and got the Nobel for Medicine.
There’s a goodly number of people who think that both leukaemia and heart attacks are, in part at least, the result of viral infections.
It’s certainly possible, within the boundaries of what we already know about humans and diseases, that being a grossly overweight, sweaty, dripping pile of lard is a result of an infection. So, we’d better go and find out, eh?
The only problem with this plan is that it will be opposed by those very public health people we need to do the investigating work for us. For it’s far more fun to call for a tax on sugar than it is to actually do any work with fatties.
Posted: 2nd, June 2014 | In: Money, Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
