Under the skin: Omental Fat
Big bellies bulge when a person’s diet is particularly bad. Belly flab is an important external sign of metabolic inflammation. According to new research, even thin people with a little bit of belly flab are looking at problems down the road.
A study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggests that relatively normal weight people who add bulk in the bellies, as opposed to other places, are at nearly the same risk of dying from respiratory diseases (like asthma and pnumonia), cardiovascular diseases (like heart attack and stroke), and cancers as people who are morbidly obese.
“Even if you have a normal BMI and a big tummy then you are just as much at risk [of dying from these problems] as someone who is classified as obese with a large tummy.” –Dr David Haslam, chair of the National Obesity Forum,
The reason belly flab is particularly bad has to do with the quality of a person’s diet more than the calories. Belly flab in thin people is not under the skin, it’s from fat surrounding the intestines, called “omental fat.” It’s forms particularly rapidly when a person’s diet is loaded with harmful trans fatty acids, which are so toxic, the body can’t even absorb them properly and they cake up within the intestinal lining (the omentum).
Can three weeks really do the trick?
Because trans fats are so abundant in our food supply, present in snack foods, donuts pastries and most store bought breads, buns, cereals, granola bars, salad dressings, and “health” bars, that once you start avoiding them, you’ll notice belly flab melting away, as well as that turkey gobbler fat under the chin!
