Credit: Kirsty Pargeter/Alamy
Jelly belly. Thunder Thighs. Muffin tops. When it comes to our wonky bits, we have no shortage of derogatory terminology. Many societies tend to view fat as inert padding that best keeps us warm, or even as just a nuisance that needs to be gotten rid of. But it’s time to rethink this way of thinking.
There is of course a serious downside to having too much body fat. We know very well that obesity is linked to many health problems, including cancers, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Even so, many obese people do not experience these ill effects, indicating that there is something more complex going on. It turns out that fat is far from passive, as we report in our cover story on page 28. Rather, it’s a vital, dynamic part of the body, an organ in its own right that works with the brain, bones and more to help us stay healthy.
This radical reframing of fat helps us better understand obesity – not as a moral failing, but as an organ failure. This can shift the narrative from shame and blame towards the development of better treatments for the disease. Indeed, efforts are now being directed toward new ways to “reprogram” faulty fat cells in order to restore health and perhaps even transform “unhealthy” obesity into a more benign form.
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Fat is a vital and dynamic part of the body, an organ in its own right that contributes to our health.
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Encouragingly, this does not necessarily require dramatic weight loss. Many of the benefits of today’s weight loss drugs do not appear to come from the pounds they help you lose, but rather from improving fat distribution and function.
Achieving this transformation would be revolutionary, not only for improving health, but also for redefining what healthy body shapes look like. One downside to the runaway success of GLP-1 drugs is that they risk deflating the fat positivity movement and reviving old moral judgments about body size and self-control.
But if fat could be reprogrammed, many more of us could live longer, healthier lives without obsessing about our size. A better understanding of the biology of fat and how it communicates with the rest of the body is a good place to start.
