Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Cutie's Pie”

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January 8, 2007

Cutie's Pie

Hatched by Dafydd

For years, I have wondered why we assume that two persons -- call them Pat and Mike -- who eat the same portion of the same food necessarily absorb the same number of calories. I mean that it's inherently implausible: the calories you absorb depend upon the precise mechanism of digestion; since everything else in our bodies works with varying degrees of efficiency, why shouldn't the stomach, small intestine, and large intestine as well?

We've all seen people who eat, eat, eat, yet cannot gain a single pound; and others who eat no more than everyone else at table, exercise as much or more -- yet pack on the leaf-lard, year after year, regardless.

I'm in the latter camp; my agent is the in former... when Ashley described to me how he ate his way across Italy some years ago -- at least 3,000 calories per day (by the traditional measurement) -- I could only seethe with envy. The answer seemed pretty obvious to me: that "3,000 calories" for Ashley was really only about 1,500 per day; but had I eaten all that pasta and pizza, cheese-stuffed portabellas and cream sauce... it would have been about 4,500 calories per diem!

But the proof (of the pudding?) has been lacking -- until now. Last month, AP reported a stunning breakthrough in our understanding of how food calories become body calories... which will eventually allow us to perfectly manage weight, from morbidly obese, to obese, to overweight, to underweight, to skeletal:

The size of your gut may be partly shaped by which microbes call it home, according to new research linking obesity to types of digestive bacteria.

Both obese mice - and people - had more of one type of bacteria and less of another kind, according to two studies published Thursday in the journal Nature.

As it happens, humans cannot naturally digest the food we eat. This isn't unusual; termites cannot naturally digest wood, either. All we can do is break the food down to itty bitty pieces: the final work of turning fats, carbohydrates, and protein to lean body tissue, blood, bone, body fat, and biochemical energy is done by bacteria that live in our digestive tract. (This is the scientific field of "infectobesity.")

There are two main types of bacteria that can do the job of actually digesting food: Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes; the latter are much more effective than the former. Firmicutes extract more body calories per food calorie than do Bacteroidetes... and the exact mix of these bacteria in Pat's and Mike's digestive system determines, to a large degree, how much weight they pack on:

In one study, Gordon and colleagues looked at what happened in mice with changes in bacteria level. When lean mice with no germs in their guts had larger ratios of Firmicutes transplanted, they got "twice as fat" and took in more calories from the same amount of food than mice with the more normal bacteria ratio, said Washington University microbiology instructor Ruth Ley, a study co-author.

It was as if one group got far more calories from the same bowl of Cheerios than the other, Gordon said.

In a study of dozen dieting people, the results also were dramatic.

Before dieting, about 3 percent of the gut bacteria in the obese participants was Bacteroidetes. But after dieting, the now normal-sized people had much higher levels of Bacteroidetes - close to 15 percent, Gordon said.

From an evolutionary standpoint, I would guess that people whose ancestors (on the mother's side) were poor and often on the brink of starvation probably have higher levels of Firmicutes in their guts; we get our necessary bacterial "infection" from our first food -- usually breast milk -- and in starvation situations, females with higher levels of Firmicutes would be much more likely to survive and breed, being able to extract more calories from the meagre amounts of available food.

Either way, this holds out the promise of finally being able to help people lose weight (or gain it) by techniques more effective than the crude "eat less and exercise more" -- which sounds great but actually works for only a fraction of the population. To lose weight, replace a portion of the patient's Fermicutes with Bacteroidetes. Similarly, by reversing that process, impoverished people in countries prone to famine could be more fully nourished by the smaller amounts of food available to them.

Millions of Americans have been waiting for just such a breakthrough... now we just have to wait until the doctors decide to do some large-scale longitudinal studies. (Pssst... I volunteer!)

That is, if the Center for Science in the Public Interest -- the folks who breathlessly informed us all that Mexican food, Chinese food, pizza, and popcorn were fattening -- will allow infectobesity research to continue... or whether they will launch a jihad against it, as they did against the synthetic fat substitute olestra.

See, the CSPI believes that suffering and hardship builds character; and by golly, they're out to make sure we get it, good and hard. What it really boils down to is this: who do you want to control your caloric intake... you and your doctor? Or a bunch of sallow, pasty-faced vegans giddy from self-induced malnutrition?

Hand me that bucket of Bacteroidetes, Mabel, and down the hatch!

Look out teeth,
Look out gums,
Look out Fermicutes,
Here it comes!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 8, 2007, at the time of 7:15 AM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: Hal

If you read the original research articles, the group makes clear that they're uncertain about the direction of causality; that is to say, does obesity cause the shift in bacterial populations or is it the other way around?

A small but not insignificant difference, it'll be interesting to see what comes of this.

The above hissed in response by: Hal at January 8, 2007 7:47 AM

The following hissed in response by: Big D

I got the same read as Hal - they are not entirely sure what is cause and what is effect. But this reminds me of the business with ulcers and bacteria.

The above hissed in response by: Big D at January 8, 2007 9:33 AM

The following hissed in response by: Mr. Michael

Just the same... it's worth investigating. Even if a double portion of Bacteroidetes does nothing to solve our weight GAIN problem, the episode with the mice given Fermicutes gives real hope to folks in starvation economies.

'Course, I'm really really hoping the Bacteroidetes work when administered...

The above hissed in response by: Mr. Michael at January 8, 2007 10:25 AM

The following hissed in response by: Robert Schwartz

I KNOW that it is the bacteria.

The above hissed in response by: Robert Schwartz at January 8, 2007 10:34 AM

The following hissed in response by: BigLeeH

My understanding is that the mouse studies suggest that the bacteria cause obesity since the researchers could make lean mice fat by infecting them with bacteria from the guts of obsese mice. The purpose of that experiment was to try to get a handle on the direction of causality.

The above hissed in response by: BigLeeH at January 8, 2007 12:42 PM

The following hissed in response by: nk

I have the same weight plus or minus five pounds as when I was nineteen years old. When I go over five pounds plus, I lose my appetite and turn anorexic. When I go under five pounds minus I dream of Hershey bars and eat everything edible in sight. Nyahh, nyahh, nyahh -- not really. I wanted a bigger torso and greater upper-body strength but the more I exercised the skinnier I got. In my case, there's something there that won't let me gain weight whether it's fat or muscle. For you guys that can gain weight and muscle by eating and exercising but don't want to -- DON'T EAT!

(If you don't believe me, I have posted a recent picture of me, for the first time, on my site.)

The above hissed in response by: nk at January 8, 2007 8:05 PM

The following hissed in response by: BigLeeH

It's funny how many different kinds of people will line up to defend the unsatisfactory status quo in the dieting world. It's not just the health nazis and vegan fundamentalists who attack any deviation from pious self-denial in nutrition. You also have your failed dieters who take comfort in the belief that controlling ones weight is impossibly difficult and, thus, they can't be expected to do it. When the angry mob gathers with torches and pitchforks to storm the castle of the latest diet-doctor it is the chubby ones who lead the charge. Nothing makes them madder than someone who challenges their excuse for being fat.

I have recently found a way to control my weight and I have a constant temptation to tell people how to do it. I was wondering around in ont of those friend-of-a-friend sites and I happened into a page where people were complaining about how hard it is to lose weight. Unable to resist I made a few helpful, well-intended suggestions and I am convinced that it is only the relative anonymity of the Internet that saved me from having overstuffed ladies waddling up to my door to throw Molotov Cocktails.

And oh yes, despite no longer being a fat person I still think I can speak for many readers of this site in saying, "nk, we all hate you -- just a little bit -- for being effortlessly thin. But your daughter is very cute, despite looking quite a bit like you."

The above hissed in response by: BigLeeH at January 9, 2007 10:37 AM

The following hissed in response by: nk

BigLeeH,

Thank you, but my daughter's good looks actually come from my mother who, as I may have mentioned before, is a direct descendant of Helen of Troy.

My "nyahh, nyahh, nyahh -- not really" meant that I have never been especially happy for being such an ectoderm. My father could bring down a horse with one hand. (Not for fun, there are things you have to do to horses sometimes in taking care of them that require them to be lying down.) I would have preferred a mesoderm's build and upper body strength even if it came with a more liberal calorie thermometer.

The above hissed in response by: nk at January 9, 2007 12:18 PM

The following hissed in response by: BigLeeH

nk,

I'm a pretty big guy but I am not sure I could bring down a horse with one hand, although the last time I rode a horse it stepped in a gopher hole and went down, dumping me on a barbed-wire fence. Happily, the horse was uninjured and the wet weather prevented my colorful language from igniting the grass.

I'm pretty sure that ectoderm isn't the word you were looking for (try ectomorph).

Men who have daughters that look like them is one of my favorite examples of the insufficency of logic to explain the world. If guy A has daughter B and B looks like A and B is cute then logic would appear to force one to assume...

The above hissed in response by: BigLeeH at January 9, 2007 2:40 PM

The following hissed in response by: nk

BigLeeH,

Bringing down a horse: My father would do it by grabbing the hackamore, NOT a bridle with a bit, close under the horse's chin and twisting the horse's head in a certain way.

Thank you, you're right about my misuse of "ectoderm" when it should have been "ectomorph". I should stick to English.

"If guy A has daughter B and B looks like A and B is cute then logic would appear to force one to assume..."
I wonder too.

The above hissed in response by: nk at January 9, 2007 5:07 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

BigLeeH:

If guy A has daughter B and B looks like A and B is cute then logic would appear to force one to assume...

...That A's genes are dominant, and his wife's are recessive. What else could one possibly conclude?

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at January 9, 2007 5:34 PM

The following hissed in response by: BigLeeH

A's genes are dominant, and his wife's are recessive. What else could one possibly conclude?

I don't think political correctness will allow me to point out that all the genes on the Y chromosome are dominant. But then again, I am an old-fashioned, stand-up-to-pee kind of a guy and the finer points of such things elude me.

Besides, I was talking logic, not genetics, and the two subjects should never be combined. If women started applying logic to genetics the human race would die out in two generations.

The above hissed in response by: BigLeeH at January 10, 2007 7:37 AM

The following hissed in response by: nk

Let's not forget that she was in her mama's belly for nine months (to the day in our case). Whatever genetic material daddy contributed had to be modified by mama's nurture. Here I go, playing doctor again without knowing what I'm talking about, but there are a lot of questions out there about the influence of the womb in addition to the DNA in how a child comes out.

On safer ground, it may be that beauty, like divinity, is something extra that overlays the genetic code. My ancestress, for example, never became a goddes but her brothers, Castor and Pollux, did become gods through a special charisma from Zeus. Her poor sister, Clytemnestra, got neither divinity nor special beauty.

So that a girl may resemble her father in the roughly-drawn sense but be beautiful though he is not. (I take no umbrage at the implication against me. At age 50, I have been thought good-looking enough by enough people, principally my wife, not to be insecure about it.)

The above hissed in response by: nk at January 10, 2007 12:03 PM