Obesogens - Have you ever heard of obesogens?

The first paragraphs from an article on Mother Jones – made me take a journey this morning – I had not planned to make.

I found it interesting and after I found the third source – I felt comfortable to take the tin foil hat off

– and ask the question, “Why aren’t we seeing this reported anywhere else?”

A chemical common in food packaging—Bisphenol-A (BPA)—has for years been scrutinized for potential links to reproductive problems, heart disease, cancer, and even anxiety. And now new research suggests BPA, which leeches out from things like aluminum cans, drink straws, plastic packaging, and even cashier's receipts, could increase the risk for obesity in preteen girls.

 And two more paragraphs from a different article on Mother Jones

The food industry likes to portray obesity as a matter ofpersonal responsibility: People who eat too much gain weight, and it's their own fault.

That view willfully neglects the role that industry marketing, particularly to children, plays on shaping people's food habits. Meanwhile, evidence is mounting that exposure to certain industrial chemicals in food, often at very low levels, changes the way people metabolize calories and can lead to weight gain. While no one would say that these chemicals, known as obesogens, are the sole cause of rising rates of obesity in the United States, they may well be contributing significantly to it.

Obesogens

Have you ever heard of obesogens?

I had not.

I have heard a lot about how people – the person – the lazy, stupid, ignorant, fat slob of a person (like me) is responsible for all the obesity in the world.

But I had not heard about obesogens.

Am I blaming obesogens for my roll of fat around my waist.

Nope - but I definitely believe that we should start keeping an eye on the research being done.

Why?

Because the changes to our bodies - from these obesogens - could be multi-generational in their effect.

The next article took the tin foil hat off.

Posted at the National Institute of Health – nih.GOV -

http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/july-podcast/

Mounting evidence from over the past decade suggests thatcertain chemicals may be playing a role as well. For some people, so-called obesogens may be altering their metabolism and fat cell development, making it harder to maintain a healthy weight. In this podcast, host Ashley Ahearn talks with Bruce Blumberg about the state of our understanding of obesogens.

BLUMBERG: Well, the mechanism is that PPAR-gamma, activation of PPAR-gamma, causes there to be more and larger fat cells in these animals and predisposes a type of stem cell in the animals called a mesenchymal stem cell to want to become a fat cell.

AHEARN: Ok, so you’re seeing it in mice—how do you make the jump to the human population? Can we extrapolate?

BLUMBERG: Oh, that’s an easy one. So, there are pharmaceutical drugs that activate the same receptor—called Actos and Avandia3—that are known to make people fat. So that experiment’s actually been done. So if I give humans a drug that activates PPAR-gamma, and they get fat, why would you imagine that a chemical that activates the same receptor wouldn’t have exactly the same effect?

AHEARN: How many other chemicals like this are we exposed to in our daily lives? What are the main obesogens that you watch and you would say are concerning?

BLUMBERG: Well, right now there’s a list of about 20 known obesogens,

SNIP

AHEARN: Dr. Blumberg, I realize you’re not a dietician or a medical doctor, but what would you say, what do you do in your own life to work your knowledge of obesogens into the way you manage your own weight, or what would you say to other folks that are concerned about their exposure to obesogens?

BLUMBERG: I would include obesogens as part of a larger group of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and I think it’s probably wise and beneficial at any stage of your life to minimize exposure to such chemicals. So in my house we eat organic food as much as possible. We minimize plastic in our lives. We minimize the amount of processed food that we eat. We don’t eat a lot of canned and prepackaged foods. My wife is very fond of cooking fresh food. We avoid too much added sugar, which if you make the food yourself you don’t have to worry about what’s in there or where it came from, right? You have some control over that. So I think these are all things that we can do in our own lives to minimize exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and I think that has a long-term benefit.

And the hormonal effects could be multi-generational.

We let the chemical and pharmaceutical companies go about their business – with little oversight and very little long-term effects studies.

We see the results of chemical and pharmaceutical malfeasance only after class action lawsuits are filed AFTER people have been maimed or killed by the chemicals and pharmaceuticals they ingest or are exposed to.

Yet we do nothing - we don't blame the pharmaceutical and chemical companies - we generally blame the people (person) who has the audacity to file a lawsuit as a gold digger.

We reduce the regulations on pharmaceutical and chemical companies by reducing the staffing and effectiveness of of regulatory agencies.

We allow chemical and pharmaceutical companies to infiltrate our state legislatures and our Congress and allow them to control the release of information to the general public.

Situations like this are why chemical and pharmaceutical companies belong to and provide generous financial support to the extremist American Legislative Exchange Council - where ALEC legislators intentionally slash regulations, reduce funding to regulatory agencies and cut staffing to regulatory agencies and then tell their constituents not to believe the research - cause it's based on what ALEC refers to as "junk science". ALEC legislators introduce corporate written ALEC legislation to stop consumers from having legal recourse against the malfeasance of the chemical and pharmaceutical companies.

You see, at ALEC - only the research that supports their corporate paying members - is valid science.
You see, at ALEC - the profit of their corporate members is more important than the general public - cause ALEC needs the money from corporations - more than they need or want you or I to exist.

Corporations exist solely for the sake of corporate profit

- profits that benefits the 1% who are the stockholders

- while literally harming the general public who use their under-regulated pharmaceuticals and chemicals.

We allow this 

– when are we going to take our government back from the corporations?