by Alice Shabecoff
If it hadn’t been for the Big Macs that Joannie ate pretty much
three times a week, she wouldn’t have gotten fat. If she hadn’t been
exposed while in her mother’s womb to chemicals x, y and z, Joannie
wouldn’t have had the propensity to get fat. And if Joannie’s mom had
eaten more sensibly, both waistlines would be slimmer.
Fat people most likely are programmed to become fat before taking their first sip of milk.
Today’s news is, that pesticides are among the chemicals responsible for this reprogramming.
Two of three U.S. adults are now classified as overweight. Type II
diabetes has increased in like measure over the same decades, and so
has heart disease. This is not a coincidence. These illnesses share
common characteristics: they are triggered while in the womb by
exposure to the same kinds of chemicals and the outcomes show up in
adulthood. Scientists now call clusters like this “the fetal origins
of adult diseases.”
The most likely culprits are chemicals now grouped together under
the rubric “endocrine disrupters.” It’s been known for about two
decades, though disputed by the manufacturers, that these chemicals
alter the normal signaling pathways of hormones.
Think of Bisphenol A
(BPA), right now the nation’s most celebrated endocrine disruptor (see
my blog on how industry is defending BPA, posted a few weeks ago).
Pesticides, though not specifically thought of as endocrine
disruptors nor regulated as such, can similarly knock normal
development off track.
Research has just found that the family of pesticides among the most
widely used in the world is connected to the three adult illnesses of
obesity, diabetes II and heart disease (and brain damage). This is
the pesticide family of organophosphates, concocted from petroleum with
an addition of phosphoric acid.
When lab rats are exposed to these pesticides through the mothers’
diet, at a time in their development equivalent to a human baby’s
second trimester in the womb, their metabolism changes in two ways:
their cholesterol and triglycerides rise. These abnormal and lasting
changes resemble the major factors that predict and lead, later in
life, to obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular heart disease
(specifically, atherosclerosis, a condition in which fatty material
collects along the arteries and hardens artery walls).
These changes in metabolism happen at low levels, within the levels
we are uniformly exposed to, which the Environmental Protection Agency
declares as “safe” but are evidently not. The changes are the
strongest when the mother rats are fed a high-fat diet. Human babies
may even be underweight at birth (and there’s an epidemic of
underweight babies in the U.S.), but quickly become overweight.
Humans run into these pesticides in our daily foods and in water.
Of course, children continue to be exposed once they are born and are
in fact exposed more than adults because they eat and drink more in
relation to their body weight and have a higher ratio of skin.
The other groups of people exposed most to organophosphates and
other pesticides are the same groups suffering from the highest rates
of obesity – people who live in run-down inner-city neighborhoods, the
poor, and farmworkers. Again, not a coincidence but a connection, a
trigger.
Dr. Ted Slotkin of Duke University, the researcher responsible for
these discoveries, found another compelling clue: exposure caused harm
to the rodent’s brain, as well as its metabolism. Once the exposed lab
animal was born and started to eat at will, its consumption of a
high-fat diet reduced the adverse symptoms in its brain functioning.
As Dr. Slotkin muses, “If you’ve got neurofunctional deficits, and they
can be offset by continually eating Big Macs, then you will naturally
(but unconsciously) select that kind of food because it will make you
feel better.” Unfortunately, increased fat will further harm the
animal’s, or human’s, metabolism.
What this means for you.
While trying to conceive, during pregnancy, while nursing, and for
your children, avoid pesticides; eat organic foods. Consult the
Environmental Working Group’s website
www.foodnews.org.
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Alice Shabecoff is the co-author with her husband Philip of Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on our Children. See
www.poisonedprofits.com.