Obesity leaves children with livers like foie gras

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: The Australian

CHILDREN as young as four are developing livers so fatty that they resemble the French delicacy foie gras.

Specialists meeting in Italy say rising obesity rates across the developed world are driving an increase in fatty liver, which has only recently been recognised as an independent risk factor for heart disease and other health problems.

Healthy livers are dark red and contain little or no fat. When fat is laid down in the liver - for reasons that remain unclear, although it is associated with poor diet, excessive alcohol, insufficient exercise and other lifestyle habits - the organ turns yellow and becomes soft.



Read more: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23607860-5013404,00.html

[havocmom]

1. So, maybe pate lovin space aliens are behind the big push with corn sweeteners

and soda pop?

[otohara]

2. LOL

this isn't funny and yet I'm crackin up.

[havocmom]

20. Sorry. No, not funny, but trying to find humor is how I cope with the insanity

that is life as currently being fucked up in America.

[DBoon]

3. "To Serve Man"

[krkaufman]

6. "... it's a cookbook!!!"

:)

Seemed necessary.

[libodem]

11. I honestly don't believe you're very far off the mark

I think that the high-fructose-corn syrup that is in everything now days is to blame for many of our ills. It is almost as bad as alcohol sugar. The stuff circulates in the blood stream and since the body doesn't recognizes it like it does regular sugar no insulin is sent out to process it. Therefore it circulates in ht e blood stream, raising the blood sugar, and then it is converted straight to fat and laid down in the body. Corn is just not that good for people. Corn is just not even that good for cattle. Cows were meant to live on grass or hay. Part of the reason cattle are fed all the antibiotics is because the corn cuts up their guts and they get infections. I'm not keen on biofuel, but other than tortillas, the crap is better off being burned in a gas tank.

[Delphinus]

22. A few years ago,

I purged EVERYTHING in my house that even had a trace of HFCS. I read every label before I put it in my basket. Without health insurance, one has to take every extra step to remain healthy, imvho.

[MercutioATC]

4. ...at least they'll have something to put on their crackers...

[krkaufman]

5. chortle. My sister was telling me recently about the book, 'The Road', by Cormac McCarthy ...

... (the same "guy" who wrote 'No Country for Old Men'), where, in a post-apocalyptic world, babies or little children are roasting on spits over a barbecue as we've devolved to the cannibalistic world envisioned by Ted Turner (perhaps after reading 'The Road'?).

At least, we now know, that it'll be gourmet fair.

My apologies.

[raystorm7]

7. Remind me not to eat this stuff =/

http://goveg.com/feat/foie/

[kestrel91316]

8. In cats that's called hepatic lipidosis. Yoiks.

[sofa king]

9. Paging Dr. Lecter....

[Hawkeye-X]

10. Came for the Dr. Lecter reference.

I see I was not disappointed! :hi:

[ryanmuegge]

12. Obesity is something we no longer have to worry about.

[Delphinus]

23. Why? n/t

[ryanmuegge]

24. Because soon nobody will be afford to eat.

Cheap, plentiful food is a thing of the past.

[boobooday]

13. What is with doctors and the food metaphors?

When my daughter had her adenoids out, it was early morning. Hubby, who hates hospitals anyway, whispered to me as he saw the doc coming down the hall "Please don't let him use any food metaphors."

So the doctor sits down and says, "It went well, you should have seen those things, they were just like sponge cake!"

Which made me never want to eat sponge cake again. Now I'll add foie gras to that list (without much regret).

[Quantess]

26. I would never eat foie gras, so I didn't even think of it as a food metaphor.

All foie gras makes me think about is a tortured duck or goose being force fed with a tube shoved down its throat.

[Solly Mack]

14. I'll never look at children the same again

[BadgerKid]

15. Making foie gras & mini rant

(emphasis added)

The last stop on the tour was the gavage room (where Noel-Artaud is sitting), where the ducks are fed a kilo of farm-grown maize each day to enlarge the size of their livers to 600 grams. This force-feeding is what outrages animal activists. But Noel-Artaud explained that gavage takes place only in the final 15 days of the ducks' lives, and that the grain goes into a pouch. And his, he stresses, is an artisanal farm, not a factory farm. The ducks do live 20 to a pen in confinement during this time. If they were put back in their outdoor pens, he said, their livers would shrink to normal in 10 days.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:sZRTfHkOZ2wJ:eats.beloblog.com/archives/2007/09/france_notebook_how_they_make.html+how+to+make+foie+gras&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us


-----

Previously I was on the fence as to whether HFCS causes obesity. I think, yes, in the absence of the other things people could be doing, such as exercising and watching their weight. I think I remember reading of people who have genetics preventing them from digesting fructose. Barring that and any other unknown complicating factors that we don't know about yet, there is no biochemical reason that I have come across that makes HFCS inherently bad -- your body is designed to handle the compounds in it. Even in bodybuilding circles it is said that eating fructose will expedite the refilling of liver glycogen (stored energy) and that in the face of a regular overconsumption of fructose, your body will make fatty acids. If you don't burn those off, they get bundled up (esterified) and stored in the liver (human foie gras, anyone?) or in fat cells.

I'm just looking out for y'all because it is possible to minimize HFCS intake. I say 'screw the industry'.

Oh yeah, we wouldn't be having this debate if the protectionist sugar subsidies weren't in place. Those could probably be removed since corn ethanol production is ramping up.

Edit: spelling

[whistle]

16. Have republicans been eating children's livers, "infante foie gras"

:puke:

[havocmom]

19. Might as well be, they are spending their futures at record rate

Perhaps they would think it a kindness to eat the little tykes rather than force them to inherit bush's debt for the War To End All Domestic Spending.

[melody]

17. I'm a fat person (have been fat since I was a child) and my liver is healthy

I have a big family in more ways than one -- I had one relative with liver disease and she was slender.

This sounds like more industry propaganda to me. We've seen a lot of that with the uptick in the Howard/Bush-minded
"bullshit before science" psychology.

[galledgoblin]

18. "a modest proposal", anyone?

omnomnomnomnom

[varkam]

21. That seems like a very odd comparison to make.

:shrug:

[Javaman]

25. Mmmmm, foie gras. oh sorry. ah hem, foie gras is soylent green!!! nt

[GoneOffShore]

27. Yummy!!!

And they're Australian kids.

Better tasting.

[Crunchy Frog]

28. That gives me some ideas of what to do with unruly or obstreperous children.

:evilgrin: