Oh, good. Again we’ve found a reason to bring back the “big-boned” excuse. As the London Telegraph reports, “The difference in the number of fat cells between lean and obese people is established in childhood and, although fat people replenish fat cells at the same rate as thin ones, they have around twice as many.”

So it’s not that you constantly drink soda, eat Cheetos for breakfast, down a case of beer in a night and do nothing but watch Maury Povich. Instead, your giant beer gut and cankles are your parents fault. After all, they were the ones who told you what to eat.

Fortunately, this does not have to be just another excuse. As the article reports:

This remarkable glimpse of what gives us beer guts, love handle and muffin tops could also lead to new approaches to fight the flab, by cutting the overall number of fat cells in the body, as well as providing an insight into why fat people find it so hard to lose weight, because the number of fat cells in a person remains the same, even after a successful diet…

The fundamental new insight into the cause of obesity comes from an international team lead by Dr Kirsty Spalding, Prof Jonas Frisén and Prof Peter Arner who found the body constantly produces new fat cells to replace equally rapid break down of the already existing fat cells due to cell death.

They also show, that overweight people generate and replace more fat cells than do lean – and that the total number of fat cells stays equal after a diet program.

Until now, it was not clear that adults could make new fat cells. Some had assumed that they increase their fat mass by incorporating more fats into already existing fat cells in order to maintain their body weight (lean, overweight, obese). However now it seems we constantly produce new fat cells irrespective of our body weight status, sex or age.

So basically, if you want to loose weight, you must forever alter what you eat to fit a healthy diet. No more Giant Man breakfasts, or all-you-can eat cheesecake nights. Unfortunately, I think that’s all American restaurants offer, these days. Maybe we’ll start to slim down once the food shortage hits. If you think about it, catastrophe is just how we like to learn. (Iraq, New Orleans, the economy, George W. Bush…need I say more?)