Do Antibiotics Contribute To Obesity? 252
sciencehabit writes "Farmers have long used antibiotics to make cows, pigs, and turkeys gain weight faster. Now, scientists claim that receiving antibiotics early in life may also make children grow fat (abstract). The researchers believe the drugs change the composition of the bacterial population in the gut in a crucial developmental stage that may have a long-lasting impact."
Can make them lose weight so why not? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They Do, Just Not By Much (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not even a matter of the size of the overweight population, IMO. I think it's more a matter of the types of obesity we're seeing. It is common to see people who have gone way beyond "fat" or "obese" and have moved well into the category of comic book science-experiment-gone-wrong fat. I was looking at some family pictures going back to the Eisenhower Administration -weddings and stuff- and some photos from Riverview Amusement Park (which closed in the '60s), and while there are fat people there, you don't see the Jabba-size, extra blubbery, gunt-fat that you see today. People are fat now in places they were never fat before. Rolls on the neck and in the upper-arm and their ankles and along the sides of their heads. Slabs of fat along the tops of the feet that cover the shoes. Chins and jowls that lay outside the collar like blubber lapels. Hands that look like catchers' mitts. Butts bigger around than an innertube from a semi. Curtains of blubber from the shoulder to beneath the back of the armpit that look like they might be some kind of navigation flaps on a deep ocean creature.
If you ride the bus or walk down a busy street in a less-affluent area, you're going to see people today who would never have been seen in 1955 outside of a circus. There's a website where they show pictures from side-shows of the 40's and 50's and the fattest of the fat person exhibitions were smaller than folks you'll see every single day. Go over to Wal-Mart right now and just walk around the grocery section for 10 minutes if you don't believe me.
This isn't normal fat any more. There's something else going on. You cannot get that fat just by having an extra cheeseburger or too many oreo cookies. This is lab-accident fat. Freak fat.
I'm pretty sure we'll learn sometime in the next few years that there are some specific industrial pollutants (some which are probably common ingredients in processed foods) that are causing this strange effect. It can't be from overeating alone. There have always been people who overeat, but there were never the kind of mutant-looking fat people who are so common today.