OBESOGENS CAN KEEP YOU FROM LOSING WEIGHT
Maintaining a healthy weight is very important in reducing your risk of developing chronic disease but for a lot of people, losing weight just seems almost impossible. We exercise and eat low-fat diets but nothing seems to work. Well, the problem could be that foods that are low-fat may not be low-fat at all but instead could be causing you to gain weight.

In 2009, a group of researchers discovered that common chemicals found in America’s food called obesogens disrupts the natural function of the human endocrine system and contributes to weight gain and obesity as well as to heart disease, high cholesterol, and diabetes. The American Medical Association backs these findings and has come out in support of the idea that obesogens have a significant role in our nation’s obesity epidemic.

The researchers found that these chemicals are in many of America’s most favorite foods, including foods that were thought to be healthy and low-fat, and enter the body through any number of sources. Obesogens are found in soy products, growth hormones fed to livestock, plastic toxins found in food packaging, chemicals in processed food, and pesticides. They interfere with the glands and organs that regulate hormones in the bloodstream to control many functions of the body including the thyroid gland and the body’s metabolism causing an inability to burn fat.

WAYS TO AVOID OBESOGENS
Fruits and Vegetables - It’s hard to imagine that fruits such as as apples, peaches, pears, and strawberries can cause you to gain weight, but the non-organic variety of these foods along with imported grapes contain more obesogens in the form of pesticides than any other fruit or vegetable according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG). Nine of the ten most commonly used pesticides are obesogens so it’s important to stay away from foods that are most prone to be contaminated. Other conventionally grown fruits and vegetables to avoid are:

• Sweet Bell Peppers
• Celery
• Nectarines
• Cherries
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Carrots

Conventionally grown oranges, grapefruit, kiwi, bananas, pineapple, mango, and watermelon have been shown to have the least pesticide residue and are fine for conventional diets. Other non-organic fruits and vegetables that get the go-ahead include:

• tomatoes
• cabbage
• onions
• sweet potatoes
• papayas
• avocados
• sweet corn
• asparagus
• sweet peas
• eggplant

Meats - When choosing meats, again the best advice is to go organic. A study in the International Journal of Obesity concluded that steroid hormones used on cattle and other meat producing livestock on conventional farms can contribute to weight gain in humans.

Almost all conventionally raised meats are also fed non-organic soy products, a cheap source of protein, and injected with numerous anabolic steroids and antibiotics, all found to be obesogens. Conventional raised beef has more than seven times more fat than organically raised, grass fed beef.

If you’re having trouble losing weight and organic meats aren’t available, your best bet is to cut out all meats from you’re diet and opt for a high quality protein shake instead. Just make sure it doesn’t contain any non-organic soy or you’ll just be defeating your purpose.

It’s also advised to avoid farmed raised salmon which is also fed a mixture of soy and a number of antibiotics and can contain as much as 10 times the level of pesticides as wild salmon.

Plastic Pollutants - The largest source of obesogens is found in food that is packaged in plastics. All plastics contain pollutants called phthalates including those found in the lining of most canned foods, plastic beverage containers, even in canned baby formula and plastic baby bottles. These pollutants readily leach out of the plastics and go directly into the foods they contain.

One such pollutant, Bisphenol A (BPA), is now detectable in over 90 percent of Americans and not only is an obesogen, but has been found to be toxic even at low doses and has been linked to a host of health problems and diseases that include cancer, diabetes and birth defects. Because of the dangers of BPA, it’s always best to avoid food or beverages that are canned or packaged in plastic unless you know specifically that the food’s manufacturer doesn’t use BPA. This includes water that is bottled in plastic.

But when dieting and trying to lose weight, it’s best to just avoid plastic food packaging altogether and under no circumstances should plastic containers be used to heat food such as in microwave ovens or used for hot beverages.

One of the worst things about obesogens is like most chemicals, they are fat soluble meaning they accumulate in body fat. Therefore, the more body fat you have the more endocrine disrupting obesogens you’re likely to have. But making a few changes in your diet in order to avoid these chemicals could make a substantial difference in your ability to lose weight.

For more in-dept information about the health effects of obesogens, read “The New American Diet” by Stephen Perrine.