A Virus Made Me Eat It!

Here comes yet another silly study tailor-made to give the hungry hippos of the world yet another excuse to avoid taking the blame for their condition.

New study results bolster the controversial hypothesis that certain cases of obesity are contagious. Over the last 20 years, some research has suggested that certain strains of human and avian adenoviruses--responsible for ailments ranging from the chest colds to pink eye--actually make individuals build up more fat cells. Having antibodies to one strain in particular, so-called Ad-36, proved to correlate with the heaviest obese people, and in one study, pairs of twins differed in heft depending on exposure to that virus. Now researchers have identified another strain of adenovirus that makes chickens plump.

Physiologist Leah Whigham of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her colleagues inoculated young male chickens with three strains of adenovirus--Ad-2, Ad-31 and Ad-37. She and her team then monitored the chickens for three and a half weeks, recording their food intake throughout. Though the infected chickens and noninfected controls consumed the same amount of food and were exposed to the same conditions, chickens carrying Ad-37 were found to have nearly three times as much fat in their guts and more than two times as much fat over their entire body at the end of the three-and-a-half week period. The other two virus strains appeared to have little effect on weight.

Reading this article, I'm reminded of the PLoS paper by John Ioannidis explaining why most published research findings are false; the more sensational the claim, the more likely it is to be bogus, and as implausible claims go, this has to be one of the most far-fetched out there: short of somehow depressing its host's activity levels while leaving its appetite unaffacted, how on earth can any virus possibly force the creature carrying it to sprout extra fat cells? It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense from an evolutionary point of view: being able to easily gain weight is actually a plus for most wild animals just as it was for nearly all humans until the last century, so it shouldn't have taken some virus to bestow such a benefit, and in any case viruses which are actually beneficial to their hosts are essentially unheard of.

My own take on the matter is simple: unless these researchers are indicating that certain adenoviruses depress activity levels while leaving appetite untouched, these results amount to a thermodynamic impossibility: two physiologically identical creatures which consume the same amounts of food and expend the same amount of energy cannot possibly gain substantially different amounts of weight. In any case, whatever the truth of the matter, none of this has much relevance to the obesity which afflicts vast numbers of people throughout the Western world today: virus or no virus, the only reason one packs on the pounds is that one can't stop eating more than one needs to. Obesity is due to insufficient self-control, not some virus, one's "glands", a slow metabolism, having too much work to eat right (East Asians work harder and yet manage to eat less than Westerners), or any of the other ridiculous excuses people come up with for the tires around their thighs and stomachs, and the cure is equally straightforward: cut out all the snacks, fries and assorted junk food, give a bigger role to rice and fish in your daily intake, and your weight will plunge to normal levels in no time.

PS: The abstract for the actual research paper can be read here.

Comments

[Andrew]

"unless these researchers are indicating that certain adenoviruses depress activity levels while leaving appetite untouched, these results amount to a thermodynamic impossibility"

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that the researchers are claiming said thermodynamic impossibility at all. The study doesn't even address the behavior of the chickens.

"short of somehow depressing its host's activity levels while leaving its appetite unaffacted, how on earth can any virus possibly force the creature carrying it to sprout extra fat cells"

I would not even be surprised to find that a virus depressed its host's activity levels. If a pathogen like Toxoplasma can change its host's personality, I wouldn't put behavioral changes past even a simple adenovirus. (In fact some of the other viruses they mention associated with weight gain, like canine distemper virus, seem to do so through damage to the nervous system.)

Anyway, I highly doubt that these adenoviruses are responsible for the sudden increase in obesity, but I don't think it's at all far-fetched to suppose that they might have some effect on adiposity or lipid metabolism. People once scoffed at the notion that a bacteria could cause stomach ulcers, after all.

[Abiola]

"I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that the researchers are claiming said thermodynamic impossibility at all."

But what exactly *are* they claiming? Go ahead and tell me, if you can discern it from the material at hand. They pointedly *didn't* say a single thing about how activity levels were affected by adenovirus infection, so what conclusion can one reasonably draw other than that they seem to think these didn't differ between test subjects and controls?

"I don't think it's at all far-fetched to suppose that they might have some effect on adiposity or lipid metabolism."

And what of it? If one isn't eating more than one needs, one won't have spare calories to be affected by any possible changes in "adiposity or lipid metabolism", will one? This is elementary physics: If [calories in > calories out] then [weight gain].

"People once scoffed at the notion that a bacteria could cause stomach ulcers, after all."

Yeah, and they also laughed at Bozo the clown. This irrelevant comeback is something I'm more used to seeing from creationists - barring a lot of further confirmatory work, these claims are almost certainly spurious, and they're *certain* to be spurious unless they indicate some change in activity levels of hosts: the idea that a virus - especially one of the adenovirus family - would actually make its carrier's metabolism *more efficient* is about as plausible as pink unicorns living on the rings of Saturn.

[Andrew]

"But what exactly *are* they claiming? Go ahead and tell me, if you can discern it from the material at hand. They pointedly *didn't* say a single thing about how activity levels were affected by adenovirus infection, so what conclusion can one reasonably draw other than that they seem to think these didn't differ between test subjects and controls?"

Well come on Abiola, a researcher only has a finite amount of time and effort. To measure the activity of these chickens accurately would be extremely difficult - I seem to recall that a while back someone published a study where they had subjects wear underwear that recorded all their movements, and found that thin people fidgeted more. Not the sort of observation that's easy to do with chickens, unless these researchers - nutritionists and virologists - set up some collaboration with those measuring underwear people. Plus the chickens were kept in isolated biosafety rooms. As far as I can tell, they made no effort even to observe activity levels. Not even a cursory "no obvious behavioral differences were observed." It's very strained to reason from "they didn't mention activity levels" to "they must believe that activity levels were the same." The only sentence that remotely deals with this topic is "These data, coupled with the in vivo observations that there were no gross histological changes in the brains of Ad-36-infected animals (5) make it likely that the Ad-36 virus works directly on adipose cells." Yet this doesn't even rule out activity changes - if you were storing up all your calories in fat, you'd have less left for daily activity, and thus might move around less solely because you have fewer free calories to burn. Not to mention that adipose cells themselves release hormones, which could affect behavior...

""I don't think it's at all far-fetched to suppose that they might have some effect on adiposity or lipid metabolism."

And what of it? If one isn't eating more than one needs, one won't have spare calories to be affected by any possible changes in "adiposity or lipid metabolism", will one? This is elementary physics: If [calories in > calories out] then [weight gain]."

I don't see what your point is, or how this contradicts the study at all. The study wasn't trying to say that food intake, self-control, exercise, etc have no effect on obesity or that this virus explains obesity completely. All it says is that the virus influences body fat. In fact, it doesn't even say that the chickens infected with the fat-inducing virus gained weight (they did, but the difference was not statistically significant) - it just says they have more body fat.

"barring a lot of further confirmatory work"

The work on this hypothesis so far has all come from one lab, so that is suspicious. However, they have published multiple studies, using different methodologies, so at least it's not just a one-off thing. (For example, in identical twins where one is positive for Ad-36 antibodies and the other is negative, the positive twins are heavier than the negative twins - though the difference is quite small.)

[Abiola]

"I don't see what your point is, or how this contradicts the study at all."

The point is that it will be seized upon - in fact, already HAS been seized upon - as yet another excuse "explaining" why people shouldn't be blamed for their being fat. Were it not for this excuse-making potential, this study in such a relatively low-impact journal wouldn't be gaining any mainstream publicity whatsoever.

"The study wasn't trying to say that food intake, self-control, exercise, etc have no effect on obesity or that this virus explains obesity completely."

What I'm concerned with is *how* exactly this proposed change in body fat is supposed to have come about, and how to make sense of it in view of host-pathogen evolution. A purported biological phenomenon which makes no sense in light of evolution is not one whose existence I can take seriously, and right now I don't see how this one can be made sense of in such a manner.

"In fact, it doesn't even say that the chickens infected with the fat-inducing virus gained weight (they did, but the difference was not statistically significant) - it just says they have more body fat."

All the more reason for me to retain my scepticism about the significance of the findings, if one can't tell even from what they've written whether they're talking about the conversion of fat to muscle or a straightforward case of weight gain. If we really are talking about a conversion of muscle to fat, is the claim that these adenoviruses initiate some sort of wasting disease (dubious in the extreme), or is that they somehow alter the set point of minimal muscle-mass a body maintains under low activity? If the latter, by what possible means can they have such an effect? These are the sorts of questions I'd like to see plausible explanations if I'm to buy that adenovirus infection can account for *elevated* obesity levels in chickens or humans (no one doubts that viruses can make one *lose* weight).

"However, they have published multiple studies, using different methodologies, so at least it's not just a one-off thing."

This in itself says little, given that it's the same lab doing the different studies: indeed, under such circumstances we could predict nothing else, as there's no research kudos to be gained by publishing a paper saying your own previous work was worthless. When more than one other party substantiate their findings, I'll be more willing to take it seriously, but until then I see no prima facie reason to do so.

[dsquared]

assuming that these were not magical non-shitting chickens, I am not sure your thermodynamic argument goes through; there's bound to be quite a lot of variance in the amount of nutrition an animal extracts from its food.

[Andrew]

"If we really are talking about a conversion of muscle to fat, is the claim that these adenoviruses initiate some sort of wasting disease (dubious in the extreme), or is that they somehow alter the set point of minimal muscle-mass a body maintains under low activity? If the latter, by what possible means can they have such an effect? These are the sorts of questions I'd like to see plausible explanations if I'm to buy that adenovirus infection can account for *elevated* obesity levels in chickens or humans (no one doubts that viruses can make one *lose* weight)."

Well, there is no claim at the moment. They report the data they found, and leave it as a mystery for now in the Discussion: "A reduction in metabolic rate might explain the increased fat deposition, but the small changes over time would be impossible to detect with current technology. The greater body fat deposition, despite similar body weight, suggests a shift from lean body mass deposition to fat deposition during the growing period of Ad-37-infected chickens. Further research will be necessary to understand the mechanisms of these changes."

"how to make sense of it in view of host-pathogen evolution"

I'm as stumped as you...

[Abiola]

"there's bound to be quite a lot of variance in the amount of nutrition an animal extracts from its food."

Calories excreted are still calories out, and besides there's no good reason why one should expect twin animals with identical life histories to extract different amounts of nutrients from their food over any reasonably long observation period.

[dsquared]

[there's no good reason why one should expect twin animals with identical life histories to extract different amounts of nutrients from their food over any reasonably long observation period]

well yes there is if one of them had a virus which altered its metabolic rate or interfered with its hormones. Since we know that anabolic steroids can cause a body to use food to create muscle tissue rather than fat, it is hardly beyond the bounds of possibility that something else might have the opposite effect. Having seen the bizarre weight changes my uncle went through when he had thyroid cancer, I am less inclined to discount the "glands" explanation for a lot of cases of obesity than you are (albeit that it also seems quite probable that a lot of obese people damaged their glands in the first place by the amount of sugar and fat they ate).

[Abiola]

"well yes there is if one of them had a virus which altered its metabolic rate or interfered with its hormones."

Except when that happens it's pretty much always the case that the virus *decreases* the efficiency of nutrient uptake, rather than *increasing* it. From an evolutionary point of view, piling on the minimum amount of muscle needed for survival and saving the rest of one's calorie intake as fat is *already* the optimal scenario which our bodies strive for, so it's just plain loopy to expect one to buy that some virus boosts an aim which our bodies were doing their best to attain to anyway.

"Since we know that anabolic steroids can cause a body to use food to create muscle tissue rather than fat, it is hardly beyond the bounds of possibility that something else might have the opposite effect."

It's also hardly beyond the bounds of possibility that the sun won't rise tomorrow, but that doesn't mean it's *likely.* There are all sorts of things which are possible and yet which one needn't take as seriously probable, and that adenovirus infection explains why any substantial portion of Westerners are fat and getting fatter is one such. As I've said above, our bodies are *already* designed to only pack on the minimum amount of muscle required for daily life - which is why bodybuilders and cheating athletes need steroids in the first place - and that any worthwhile research finding could possibly indicate that there's room for some virus to improve on this process is incredibly farfetched.

"I am less inclined to discount the "glands" explanation for a lot of cases of obesity than you are"

A "disorder" which is so common as to afflict the majority of mankind wherever cheap junk food is to be found is, by definition, not a "disorder." It trivializes the plight of people who genuinely suffer from glandular problems to humor the conceit that 99.9% of lardasses out there don't have their penchant for supersize portions and snacking between meals to blame for their condition - funny how these "glandular" problems don't seem to affect people nearly as much in places like Korea or Japan where wolfing down generous portions of fries, big macs and tubs of ice cream isn't done on a routine basis ...

[dsquared]

[As I've said above, our bodies are *already* designed to only pack on the minimum amount of muscle required for daily life ]

Whether or not this is true of humans, which I don't necessarily accept pending a non-question-begging definition of "minimum", it is definitely not true of chickens, whose bodies are designed (literally in this case, by generations of chicken breeders) to develop muscular breasts and legs. So if a chicken suddenly starts packing on the fat because of a virus (which conclusion obviously could not be established by this one study), then it would be decent evidence that, in fact, what you believe to be a ludicrously far-fetched possibility has in fact happened, and the interaction of a particular virus and a very complicated self-regulatory system has had a surprising consequence.

In any case, does it not strike you that you started talking about something being a thermodynamic impossibility and you're now talking about it being (arguably) inconsistent with an evolutionary just-so story? As far as I can tell, these researchers haven't made the claim that all or even many cases of human obesity have a viral cause, only that some might. As far as I can see, you're really just calling this study "silly" and looking for ways to rubbish it because you think that popular misunderstanding of it might have baleful social consequences. Which is precisely the (fallacious) Republican argument against evolutionary theory, the Lancet study on mortality in Iraq and for that matter the proposition that the earth is less than six thousand years old.

(of course, I often adopt this standard myself; for example, I regard it as important to argue particularly vigorously against people who are pushing weak theories of racial biology, because I know they are at the very least providing ammunition for bigots. But I don't really see that the balance of political risks is anything like the same in this case, particularly as the cure for obesity - eat less - is going to be the same however it developed, even if it turned out that a lot of people also had to take an antiviral to prevent it recurring).

[dsquared]

In related news:

[The point is that it will be seized upon - in fact, already HAS been seized upon - as yet another excuse "explaining" why people shouldn't be blamed for their being fat]

People shouldn't be "blamed" for being fat. They should be informed about the risks of being fat and told that the way to not be fat is to eat a healthier diet, but eating food is not a morally culpable choice to make if you can afford it. There is not even any such thing as "secondary fatness" unless you really, really start reaching for one, so even the figleaves that "libertarian wowsers" reach for to have a go at the smokers are not available here. Going "neener neener neener hey fatty bum-bum" is really just rather childish and nasty and does not form the basis of any sensible policy prescription.

[Abiola]

"Whether or not this is true of humans, which I don't necessarily accept pending a non-question-begging definition of "minimum""

Yeah, it's just something I made up on the spot, and there's absolutely no scientific work on the human metabolic cycle available to which one can refer: why, one can just will oneself into packing on muscle purely by thinking about it ... Gimme a break.

"does it not strike you that you started talking about something being a thermodynamic impossibility and you're now talking about it being (arguably) inconsistent with an evolutionary just-so story?"

No, the problem is evidently with your inability to follow an argument which raises more than a single point, not with my reasoning.

"As far as I can see, you're really just calling this study "silly" and looking for ways to rubbish it because you think that popular misunderstanding of it might have baleful social consequences."

Thanks for your typically dishonest, lazy and ridiculous attempt to poison the well, but no, I think it's silly because the science strikes me as unconvincing in the extreme, and the publicity it's being given is thoroughly undeserved: imagine that!

"Which is precisely the (fallacious) Republican argument against evolutionary theory, the Lancet study on mortality in Iraq and for that matter the proposition that the earth is less than six thousand years old."

Yet more dishonest, daft rubbish from our inhouse, biologically-ignorant Marxist contrarian. Stop resorting to idiotic ad hominems whenever you find yourself not knowing what the f*ck you're talking about.

"People shouldn't be "blamed" for being fat."

Yes they SHOULD. Obesity is a highly deleterious and - other than for *extremely* rare cases such as sufferers from Prader-Willi Syndrome - *completely preventable* condition, not something to be celebrated, and just because a lot of people suffer from it doesn't mean one is under any obligation to pretend that it's somehow alright.

"eating food is not a morally culpable choice to make if you can afford it."

Eating to excess is just as morally culpable as drinking too much or shooting up too much heroin, no more, no less.

"There is not even any such thing as "secondary fatness" unless you really, really start reaching for one, so even the figleaves that "libertarian wowsers" reach for to have a go at the smokers are not available here."

Those damn "libertarian wowsers" who like to have an unfair go at the poor, harmless smokers! What do these anarcho-libertarian fascists have against lighting up in public anyway? Thank the gods the Labour Party is out there to lead the defence of smokers' rights against the libertarian hordes! This is so incredibly daft I'm at a loss for words: obviously this issue has you so riled up you can't even think straight about which groups support what positions, and in any case, since when did one have to advocate a political solution for something to be against it? I think drugs should be legalized, but I also think junkies of all types are fucking losers who deserve ostracism, and there's absolutely no contradiction there whatsoever.

"Going "neener neener neener hey fatty bum-bum" is really just rather childish and nasty and does not form the basis of any sensible policy prescription."

Self-pitying, exaggerated nonsense almost certainly spouted by one of those tubbies who want to keep indulging themselves to excess without suffering any of the negative social consequences of so doing. Obesity is both unattractive and unhealthy, and I'm not going to swallow any pabulum designed to make me feign an acceptance of a state which is properly deserving of stigmatization. Don't like being looked down on for being fat? Stop eating so bloody much, and stop trying to shift the buck for your situation while you're at it!

PS: By the way, once you've cooled down enough from having your ego stung to let your reason return to you, perhaps you can read through everything I've written thus far and confirm for yourself that *not once* have I suggested that any policy prescription arise from whatever may or may not be discovered about obesity. Part of the joy of being a libertarian is that one can acknowledge the existence of problems without feeling compelled to start thinking of ways to use government to "fix" them - if some people feel like eating themselves into an early grave, fine by me, as long as they don't demand my sympathy, sexual interest or financial support on their way there ...

[Kenji]

"cut out all the snacks, fries and assorted junk food, give a bigger role to rice and fish in your daily intake, and your weight will plunge to normal levels in no time."

As a health nut, I have one quibble---Let's encourage consumption of brown rice, not refined rice (and other refined carbohydrates).

[Wayne]

Paradoxically brown rice has a higher Glycemic Index rating than white rice, where the lower the rating the better.

[Kenji]

"Paradoxically brown rice has a higher Glycemic Index rating than white rice, where the lower the rating the better."

This is news and contrary to what I have read.

[dsquared]

do you know, somewhere in that little outburst, I think I spotted an admission that your argument that it was thermodynamically impossible for two chickens to eat the same but gain different amounts of weight, was wrong. For which much thanks; I advise against a career in animal husbandry.

Other than that, you seem to be very short indeed on arguments. Saying that I'm a Marxist (which I'm not), that I'm biologically ignorant (which I'm not, and I am surprised you tried to get away with this after the fiasco of your attempt to bluff me on oncology last week), that I can't follow your argument (which I can) and even that I'm fat (which I'm not) are none of them arguments. In as far as you were attempting to claim that it is intrinsically implausible that a virus could affect the rate at which chickens put on fat, you appear to be declaring victory and departing the field.

In so far as claiming that it is vitally important not to publicise research on whether adenoviruses can cause obesity, in order to promote the social good of making the obese feel guilty, however, you appear to still be making arguments, so let's have that debate.

No it isn't. Interesting research should be made public because it's interesting, so long as the science is sound, and I am assuming that if you had an argument as to whether the science wasn't sound, you would have brought it out by now. Maybe you have been saving up something more interesting than a whole load of arguable evolutionary just-so stories and I am about to get like totally busted, but on the evidence so far, I doubt it.

So you're in fact saying (in the open now I notice, for which thanks) that this study should be ignored and not publicised because you want to keep on imposing a standard of behaviour on others through social pressure which would be obviously illiberal if imposed through statute law. This is exactly the position I identified as "libertarian wowserism" and it's quite transparently an attempt to "have your cake and eat it", a practice which is bound to lead to much more intellectual flab than "swallowing pabulum". (note at this point how I'm capable of making jokes and you're not; this is often a good indication of who's angry and who isn't).

John Stuart Mill had a lot of excellent laughs at the expense of people who think that trying to enforce their prejudices in this way rather than through the state makes them something other than authoritarians. You come close to the consistent libertarian position in your last paragraph; it would be fine for you to withhold your "sympathy, sexual interest or financial support", but you're also adopting a double standard in deciding what you're going to call "silly", and presumably advocating that this double standard ought to be generally followed, including by the publishers of popular science magazines. (Obviously you might just be flapping your gums, but I doubt it).

Which is, of course, the definition of intellectual laziness and lack of rigour. It's ludicrously bad public policy to adopt differing scientific standards depending on whether you find the conclusions politically attractive or not. Personally, I think that intellectual flab is a far worse vice than obesity, because it inclines you to make nasty personal remarks and think you're being clever.

This is usually about the time that you tell me that I'm banned (claiming that I'm getting angry has been a decent leading indicator in the past, and when combined with the swearing it's almost infallible). Try and resist the temptation this time.

[Andrew]

"From an evolutionary point of view, piling on the minimum amount of muscle needed for survival and saving the rest of one's calorie intake as fat is *already* the optimal scenario which our bodies strive for, so it's just plain loopy to expect one to buy that some virus boosts an aim which our bodies were doing their best to attain to anyway."

I have been thinking about this a bit more and I am becoming less convinced by this argument. As I'm sure you know, leptin mutants are very obese and have huge amounts of adipose tissue. This is due mostly to a constantly huge appetite, but apparently even food-restricted leptin mutants have excess adipose tissue. This is obviously maladaptive even though it prima facie seems to be an "improvement" in metabolic efficiency. I don't think you can dismiss the results of this study as a case of a virus producing more efficient metabolism - it might very well be a maladaptive metabolic derangement. I'm not suggesting that the virus acts in a manner similar to the ob or db mutations - this seems unlikely as the infected chickens did not consume significantly more food than controls - but given that metabolism is regulated in a complex way and it is not necessarily adaptive to store more and more fat, it seems plausible to me that a virus could screw this up in the direction of more fat. Which obviously doesn't mean that it does in reality - just that it's not a priori absurd.

[David]

[the more sensational the claim, the more likely it is to be bogus, and as implausible claims go, this has to be one of the most far-fetched out there]

Whether you find Whigham's paper sensational and implausible depends on whether or not you keep up with the literature. All Whigham did was replicate a series of earlier research by Nikhil Dhurandhar. For a recent example, see
International Journal of Obesity (2005) 29, 281−286.

"Human adenovirus-36 is associated with increased body weight and paradoxical reduction of serum lipids"

http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v29/n3/abs/0802830a.html.

New Scientist got hold of the idea in their issue 2250 (5th August 2000), so it's not exactly new. The main contribution from this latest study has been to grab headlines more effectively.

It may be that all these studies have obvious faults in the science, in which case I would suggest writing to the academic journals, rather than flapping away in a blog.

[Andrew]

"All Whigham did was replicate a series of earlier research by Nikhil Dhurandhar. "

It's hardly an independent study - a Pubmed search reveals that Atkinson (the senior author on this paper) and Dhurandhar have been frequent collaborators in the past, as they were on the paper you mentioned. Multiple studies are better than a single study, but as Abiola said, it would be better still to have an independent lab replicate the result.

Anyway, it's not really appropriate to talk about these papers as if they were the work of a single author. It's not as though Atkinson wasn't the boss in all these studies...

[David]

[It's hardly an independent study]
Good point. Though I don't know about Atkinson being "the boss" -- Dhurandhar has been presenting himself as the driving force for the research. There seems to be more than one university affiliation involved.

IMHO, Abiola is right to say that "most published research findings are bogus", but for the wrong reason. It's not because 'more sensational claims are more likely to be bogus'. Most crap science gets into print by telling people what they already think is correct. Journal referees reserve their critical facilities for the papers with *unexpected* results.

This has been tested... people have tried circulating two versions of a single article, but one confirming everyone's preconceived opinions while the other version contradicted them. According to peer reviewers, that second version was riddled with weaknesses of statistics or methodology -- which were invisible to the reviewers of Version 1.

Me, I’m still young enough to like reading about research results which I didn’t expect. So it’s a point in favour of this obesity / adenovirus line of research -- that it’s not telling a lot of people what they want to hear. And it fits in (vaguely) with what I hear from my friend Anne-Thea (who *does* know what she’s talking about), about adipose tissue being an active player in the body’s economy -- a veritable endocrine organ, rather than an inert repository of fat. Interleukins, blah blah blah, inflammatory responses, blah blah blah, metabolic syndrome, blah blah blah…

Still, if it goes by the roadside in a few years’ time, and the results cannot be replicated, then I will find something else to engage my immature thirst for novelty, without missing any sleep.

[Jorge Martin]

I am a swinishly obese troll, and I get extremely offended when anybody suggests my own greed is to blame for my weight problem, so much so I'm no longer even able to spell "credibility" properly.