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Researchers Enable Mice To Exhale Fat
destinyland writes "UCLA researchers made a startling discovery: genetic alterations enable mice to convert fat into carbon dioxide.
Mammals digest fats differently than bacteria — so researchers introduced bacteria genes into mouse livers, and 'the excess fat was literally released into thin air.' (One researcher calls it 'an unconventional idea which we borrowed from plants and bacteria.') The research potentially could help treat serious medical conditions including diabetes, heart disease — and of course, obesity."
Is this something that has to be engineered into an organism, or can it be applied after-market? From the sounds of it, it's a genetic splice and not something easily applied to preexisting organisms. TFA doesn't seem to say. Anyone know? Great news for the fatties of tomorrow, but what about the porkers of today?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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You know, I see this a lot when news that could help the obese comes along. I think it's a bit ignorant. First, would you have the same reaction if it similiar news (possible breakthrough) about compulsive gamblers, smokers, alcohilcs, hard drugs, or any other addiction? What about the debilitating OCD like Howard Hughs suffered or any mental disease really? I mean, buck it up and have some will power!
I know many fat people who go days on in eating less than a 120lb person, maybe even losing the weight, only to be broken by one binge and rapidly going back to their old ways. I don't think it's just a lack of willpower, a lot of it is unnatural. Domesticated animals also get fat when there's always food in the bowl. Maybe it's in our nature: for so many generation, the next meal was uncertain, grab it while you still can.
And then there are things like HFCS which adds to the problem. 100 years ago, regular chocolate was a real WEEKLY treat for an average kid, if at all, 300 years ago, sugar was kept in silver lockboxes due to expensive nature, now we have this crap swamping the area.
Imagine in 100 years VR really gets there. I mean really, they bypass your eyeballs, wired right into the brain, touch, feel, smell, everything. Instant orgasm. Imagine how many people will be addicted. Not just because they lack the will power, but the human animal gets exposed to stimuli that in turn rewards its basest and most powerful areas of the brain and we act holier-than-thou when people actually get hooked.
Food, for some people, is the overriding addiction that make other addictions fail. Any help they get is good. And Dr. House would know that.
The purpost of fat is to ensure an organism survives when there is not enough food, and in worst case, during famine.
During most of the history of the human species, famine has been inevitable and greatly lethal.
Those humans who can best gain the most fat in the shortest amount of time, are most likely to survive - they are superior than the naturally thin people who are the first to die during famine.
'Curing' people of the ability to gain fat would be severely detremental to the species ability to survive as a whole, outside of specific cases as stated in the article, such as disease or specific genetic conditions.
I just don't believe in that whole "victim-of-the-modern-diet" argument so many fat people like to use as an excuse. I live in the same society, shop in the same stores, and I'm not fat. It's called self-control.
Anecdotal evidence. I know people that smoke 3 packs a day and don't get cancer therefore smoking doesn't cause cancer. I may be fat but at least I didn't fail logic.
There are, actually, ways of causing the body to break down food without providing ATP(by interfering with oxidative phosphorylation in your mitochondria), instead producing heat, which allows extremely efficient weight loss. 2,4-Dinitrophenol was used back in the '30s for the purpose. Unfortunately, if you get the dose wrong, the hyperthermia will fuck you up quite efficiently. Not recommended.
... corn has been described as being "edible oil", due to it taking 2 calories of oil energy to create 1 calorie of corn energy.
Bullshit. For millions of years, corn (and its ancestors) grew happily in the wild, uncultivated earth with only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide for sustenance. For thousands of years, up until the mid-20th century, it grew on cultivated land with the addition of animal waste as a fertilizer. Just because we currently use petroleum-enhanced fertilizers to increase yields and lessen the need for crop rotation does NOT mean that they are in any way "required".
...it takes 9 pounds of corn to make 1 pound of cow.
More bullshit. Cattle are currently fattened in feedlots using corn because it means higher profits from higher yield and more marbled (and therefore more expensive) muscle tissue. 100% natural-grass-fed cattle use up ZERO pounds of corn, and that's pretty much all they had to eat before they were domesticated.
While I'm at it, I'm getting really sick of the most egregious lies that keep getting trotted out around here regarding the amount of petroleum products that are "REQUIRED" by modern farm machinery to grow and process "natural" foods. Again, just because it's currently fashionable and economically desirable to do things that way does NOT make it MANDATORY. The vast majority of farm equipment runs on diesel fuel, which is easily replaced with biodiesel or alcohol. Stationary machinery that is currently powered directly by fossil fuels or with electricity generated using those same fuels are often in geographical areas where electricity can be economically generated by wind, solar, burning biomass, methane from waste processing, or nuclear. In fact, combines and tractors don't move very fast or very far. There's no reason they couldn't operate with a couple tons of batteries and hi-torque locomotive drives instead of those Cat & Cummins diesels
A lot of you seem to forget that there are vast stretches of farmland in the wide-open west that already have the majority of their power generated by nuclear and/or hydroelectric systems. In short, the only reason we aren't weaning ourselves off of "edible oil" is the greed and corruption of the US government (specifically farmbelt senators-for-sale), big agri-business, and especially the global petroleum cartels.
If an alien armada landed tomorrow and vacuumed out 100% of the oil and coal reserves on this planet, we'd suffer for a decade or two, probably losing a big chunk of the population to starvation and wars over food, but eventually we'd ramp back up using alternate energy sources and within a generation, Hummer would be a viable vehicle brand again (possibly as Electra-Hummer or something) and we'd all be right back to not giving a rat's ass about where energy came from or how much of it we're using.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
oh goodness gracious how I love that food that resembles food.
A former mayor of Philadelphia was once asked why no one else in the country can justly replicate the famous phili cheesesteak. He replied that their doing two things wrong 1) they're using real cheese and 2) they're using real meat.