Tweet
Last night, I watched a Swiss magazine programme on obesity which fascinated me. For those of you who understand French, you can watch the whole programme here.
In short, it started when a dairy farmer observed that his cows deteriorated in winter, when they didn't in the past. He asked an agronomic engineer why and this guy did an extensive study on the subject. He found the modern cattle feeds are made mainly from maize (corn) and these lacked omega-3 fatty acids but were rich in omega-6. In the past, farmers added flax seeds (linseed) to the feed, as they hadn't much else they could do with them. These seeds are very rich in omega-3 carboxylics.
Researchers started adding linseed to feedstuffs for cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry and found the quality of the meat, milk, eggs, leather etc. all improved very significantly. They went farther and found that the health of people eating this omega-3 rich food was better. This was more marked than those eating fish-based omega-3 fatty acids, as the fish usually had high levels of heavy metals which were molecularly bonded to them.
So far, nothing particularly surprising. Dieticians started to design an experiment. They sorted out a couple of thousand volunteers in a Jurassian valley who had high BMIs, across a range of ages and degrees of obesity. They were each put on a strict, balanced diet, with the food supplied to them. In a double-blind test, half of them received food where all the animal products (dairy, meat, poultry) came from animals fed with a linseed supplement and the other half were fed without omega-3-rich animal food. During and at the end of 6 months, the volunteers were seriously studied. There was little statistical difference between the two groups regarding weight loss, they both lost about the same. The general health of both groups were good with a small improvement in those with the omega-3-rich food, compared with the others, such as lower cholesterol and blood pressure.
Now for the astonishing thing! The group who were fed the non-omega-3 animal products started to put on weight at the end of the 6 months, when they went back to ordinary food. Still not astonishing. The omega-3 animal products group did not put weight back on, or very little. Further research was done and it was found that there was a distinct connection between genetic changes in the foodstuff we eat and the amount of omega-3 fatty acids the animals/birds eat and that these genetic changes have a high causal probability of engendering obesity, even in nursing children fed on milk formulae depending on the food the cows that produce the milk eat. It is believed that this may have a lifelong effect on the BMI of these babies. In other words, they suggested that the current epidemic of obesity may be caused by the fact that maize-fed animals create a deficiency in the quality of their products that is essential for the well-being, especially of children.
And my title? In my youth, I saw fields of flax used to produce linen. Cheap cotton has killed the demand for linen and farmers no longer grow flax. When they did, they also produced tonnes of linseed as a by-product and all they could do with it is to feed it to the cattle. Children were not obese, then, hence, cotton causes obesity!!!
In short, it started when a dairy farmer observed that his cows deteriorated in winter, when they didn't in the past. He asked an agronomic engineer why and this guy did an extensive study on the subject. He found the modern cattle feeds are made mainly from maize (corn) and these lacked omega-3 fatty acids but were rich in omega-6. In the past, farmers added flax seeds (linseed) to the feed, as they hadn't much else they could do with them. These seeds are very rich in omega-3 carboxylics.
Researchers started adding linseed to feedstuffs for cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry and found the quality of the meat, milk, eggs, leather etc. all improved very significantly. They went farther and found that the health of people eating this omega-3 rich food was better. This was more marked than those eating fish-based omega-3 fatty acids, as the fish usually had high levels of heavy metals which were molecularly bonded to them.
So far, nothing particularly surprising. Dieticians started to design an experiment. They sorted out a couple of thousand volunteers in a Jurassian valley who had high BMIs, across a range of ages and degrees of obesity. They were each put on a strict, balanced diet, with the food supplied to them. In a double-blind test, half of them received food where all the animal products (dairy, meat, poultry) came from animals fed with a linseed supplement and the other half were fed without omega-3-rich animal food. During and at the end of 6 months, the volunteers were seriously studied. There was little statistical difference between the two groups regarding weight loss, they both lost about the same. The general health of both groups were good with a small improvement in those with the omega-3-rich food, compared with the others, such as lower cholesterol and blood pressure.
Now for the astonishing thing! The group who were fed the non-omega-3 animal products started to put on weight at the end of the 6 months, when they went back to ordinary food. Still not astonishing. The omega-3 animal products group did not put weight back on, or very little. Further research was done and it was found that there was a distinct connection between genetic changes in the foodstuff we eat and the amount of omega-3 fatty acids the animals/birds eat and that these genetic changes have a high causal probability of engendering obesity, even in nursing children fed on milk formulae depending on the food the cows that produce the milk eat. It is believed that this may have a lifelong effect on the BMI of these babies. In other words, they suggested that the current epidemic of obesity may be caused by the fact that maize-fed animals create a deficiency in the quality of their products that is essential for the well-being, especially of children.
And my title? In my youth, I saw fields of flax used to produce linen. Cheap cotton has killed the demand for linen and farmers no longer grow flax. When they did, they also produced tonnes of linseed as a by-product and all they could do with it is to feed it to the cattle. Children were not obese, then, hence, cotton causes obesity!!!
Comment