On the heels of my last post discussing Tom Naughton's novel theory on obesity and blood glucose regulation, I'm reminded again of the whole "fatty acids are locked away in the fat cells" - what I'll call the Starving Cells Myth - of obesity. Dr. Eades is weighing in on his blog on Taubes' Why We Get Fat and reiterates once again the fallacy that is the locked away fat. Here's how he puts it:
... A non-obese person eats, uses the energy from the food and stores the rest. During the time between meals and during sleep, the non-obese person draws on the stored fat to provide energy. When the fat cell mass decreases to a certain critical point, the body signals the brain that the fat cells need a refill, so the brain initiates the hunger response. The non-obese person eats, uses some energy for immediate needs, fills the fat cells with the rest, uses the stored energy as needed, and then the cycle repeats.
It doesn’t work that way in the obese. Obese people eat, use the energy required for immediate needs and store the rest. But–and this is the extremely important ‘but’– during the time between meals and during sleep, obese people can’t access their fat stores because their baseline insulin is too high. When they can’t get to their stored fat, the lack of access to energy sets in motion all the same biochemical signals in the obese person that get sent in the non-obese, who have depleted the energy storage in their fat cells. And these signals are converted by their brains into the drive to feed, i.e., intense hunger. They have to eat to provide for their immediate energy needs because, thanks to chronically elevated insulin levels, they can’t get into to their own stored fat, even though it’s there waiting in massive quantities.
Now this all sounds perfectly reasonable, which is probably why so many just accept this as truth coming from an expert and all.
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