The Mail on Sunday, You magazine, 14 April 2002

Paula's toxic shock treatment

Extract two: Why chemicals are making us fat

The toxins in our food could be destroying our natural slimming systems, according to Dr Paula Baillie-Hamilton. In this first exclusive extract from her groundbreaking new book, she explains how cutting down on 'chemical calories' can help you lose weight.

In spite of increased awareness, eating less, buying low-calorie food, booming membership of fitness clubs, we are becoming fatter than ever. The increase in the number of overweight people was slow and consistent in the 60s and 70s, but the numbers simply rocketed during the 80s and 90s. Our diet may have changed dramatically to include far more processed and ready-made food, but, since we are not eating vastly more or exercising dramatically less, what on earth is going on?

For three years I have been studying the medical link between chemicals in our food and the environment, and unexplained weight gain. The average person is contaminated with up to 500 industrial toxins, few of which have been properly tested for harmful effects. The stark truth is that we are all so polluted that if we were cannibals our meat would most certainly be unfit for human consumption.

Growth promoters, pesticides, plastics, toxic chemicals and a whole range of the most common environmental pollutants produce fattening effects in animals and humans. Our natural waste disposal system can process some of these chemicals, but many are untouchable. They get stored in our fat and interfere with our natural slimming mechanism, or slimming system. They appear to damage our appetite 'switch', so that we tend to eat far more than we actually need and seem to prevent our bodies from burning up existing fat stores.

I have uncovered an overwhelming amount of evidence which shows that chemicals damage all the mechanisms that our bodies use to exercise. They can damage the nerves that control exercise, injure and shrink the muscles, and damage the hormones that control the growth of muscles.

Organophosphates are some of the most common pesticides found in our soft fruit and vegetables, and also have been used to fatten up livestock. At low doses, organophosphates appear to fatten up cows by severely reducing their ability to use up existing fat stores. The use of organophosphates as growth promoters has now been banned, but they are still commonly used as pesticides in many of our foods. It doesn't really matter how you are exposed, whether it is from a can of fly spray or from pesticide residues in food, once they get into your body the chances are they will damage your weight-control systems, making it just that little bit harder to lose weight in the future.

Carbamates are some of the most widely used chemicals in agriculture because they are generally reckoned to be among the least toxic of the pesticides. They are commonly found in crops such as cotton, potatoes, peanuts, citrus fruits, along with many other fruit and vegetables because of their use as fungicides. Fungicides, chemicals which stop food going mouldy, tend to be added to food around the time of harvest and before it is put into storage, so there is little opportunity for them to be washed off by the rain. As a result, carbamates are often found in relatively high levels in food. Carbamates appear to possess extremely powerful fattening abilities and their use is widespread in animal husbandry. They reduce the overall metabolic rate, making less food go further.

Antibiotics tend to have a more positive image because of their ability to clear up infections and kill germs. So when I found that antibiotics were commonly used to fatten animals, I assumed it was because they killed nasty bugs that made the animals lose weight through illness. What I didn't know then but have discovered since is that antibiotics will treat infections if given in high doses, but not at the minute doses at which they are given to animals. At these lower levels they lack the ability to kill bacteria but can promote weight gain by damaging the weight control hormones and metabolism.

The scale at which these antibiotics are used is stunning. They account for more than half of the antibacterial drugs manufactured in the USA and the UK and the vast majority of all forms of livestock will be exposed to antibacterial growth-promoters at some stage of their lives. Residues from antibiotics are found in meat from treated animals, so you will be taking them too, and more often than you think.

Organochlorines Of the synthetic chemicals that we are now exposed to, organochlorines are possibly the most fattening of all. This is largely due to their ability to cause continual damage to our weight control systems, in combination with our relative inability to get rid of them. Better known members of this group are the extremely poisonous pesticides DDT and lindane, as well as a very common group of environmental pollutants known as PCBs which were once widely produced and used as fire-retardants and insulating substances. They have now been banned because of their extreme toxicity and longevity. Despite many, but certainly not all, organochlorines having been banned for years, they are still present in our bodies at levels far above those needed to damage hormones, as they tend to persist in our tissues for decades.

Low levels of DDT have been shown to be powerful inducers of weight gain in animals. Lindane is also extremely fattening, causing obesity in animals. Despite having been banned in the UK only fairly recently, it is still legal in other countries, where it's used in flea powder, anti-nit shampoo and insecticides, and can be found on many 'cultivated' grassy areas, such as golf courses. It is also present in much of our food, particularly animal products and chocolate.

HCB is another member of this fattening group and was previously commonly used in the UK as a fungicide on wheat and other foods, but is still present in our foods because of its longevity. This organochlorine was found to possess such extreme fattening effects that in one animal study, when the food intake was cut by 50 per cent, animals treated with HCB still managed to gain more weight than the untreated animals did on full rations.

When I was in the midst of my research, it didn't take long to realise that virtually every chemical found in our food appears to have a significant effect on at least one of the major weight-controlling hormones. More specifically, these chemicals tended to increase the levels of fattening hormones such as insulin and steroids, while reducing the levels of slimming hormones such as thyroid, sex and growth hormones and catecholamines, which seemed to come most frequently under attack. Catecholamines control our appetite and 'set' our energy levels and our desire to exercise. Any fall in their levels will not only reduce the amount of voluntary exercise we feel like taking, but will also probably lessen the involuntary movements that we don't even notice. The overall effect is rather like a chemical cosh.

Synthetic chemicals can interfere with the way that our bodies absorb nutrients from foods, destroy some of the more delicate nutrients, prevent the production of other essential nutrients and even increase the rate at which the body excretes nutrients. The increased presence of synthetic chemicals in our bodies and lives has increased our need for certain nutrients - we now appear to need higher dosages, because these guidelines were not created with chemical damage in mind.

Not only can our overall level of appetite be increased by too many synthetic chemicals, but the hormones damaged are those which control our appetite for fatty and sugary foods. As the kilos pile up, certain chemicals tend to increase the proportion of body fat while simultaneously lowering the proportion of body muscle. The overall result is a fatter, less shapely body. And it doesn't stop there: these changes can have a knock-on effect on our skin too. As there is a certain amount of muscle in skin, any reduction of this will affect the firmness of the skin, making it softer and flabbier.

The most obvious sign that your slimming system is flagging is if you are already overweight, gain weight easily or if it seems a daily struggle to keep your weight down. Other relevant clues include a desire to eat fatty and sugary foods, a tendency to feel cold and changing body shape. If you have to make continual efforts to restrict the amount of food you eat or need to exercise regularly to maintain a stable weight, the chances are that your natural slimming system is not working as well as it should.

So take heart: weight gain is not just down to weak willpower, greed and laziness. Much of it is due to your body's inability to deal with toxins in your food and environment. And once you understand what is happening, you will be well on the way towards dealing with the problem. Cutting out all synthetic chemicals from our lives would be impossible, but we can be more selective. Avoiding the most fattening chemicals first will make an enormous difference. Instead of seeing foods in terms of conventional calories, we can measure them for their 'chemical calorie' content and their ability to damage our natural slimming system. Lettuce, unless it is organic, is more fattening than an avocado because it contains far more chemical calories. This is because it is a relatively fragile food crop that tends to be sprayed repeatedly, while the avocado is a much more robust crop that needs hardly any intervention at all. You will, of course, still need to pay attention to the types of food you eat - a diet of organic crisps, chocolate and fatty foods is not going to help you lose weight. The answer lies in a balanced diet, containing all the nutrients that the body needs to fully power its slimming system.

The good news is, as we shall see in next week's extract, that by reducing our exposure to the most damaging or 'fattening' of these chemicals and by increasing our intake of 'slimming' nutrients, it is possible to repair our slimming system and reduce our weight gain.

The chemical calorie count

Fish and Shellfish - Large-scale contamination of our lakes and oceans with organochlorines has meant that carnivorous fish such as salmon and trout are particularly at risk from chemical calories, because contamination tends to pass up the food chain. White fish tend to be much less polluted and have a much lower fat content, with less of a build-up of fat loving pollutants. Shellfish also seem to be less contaminated with pesticides.

Meat and Poultry vary far more in their chemical calorie content than most other types of food, because animals are exposed to a larger number of potential sources of contamination. Animals are affected not only by the environment they have grown up in, but also by the food they have been fed, as well as the other chemicals they have been directly 'treated' with. These highly variable factors can mean that some meats, such as lamb, tested high in chemical calories from one source, whereas the same type of meat originating from another source was low in chemical calories.

Dairy Products and Eggs rank just after meat and fish because of their high levels of organochlorines. Dairy foods tend to be more vulnerable to contamination because animals rid themselves of chemicals by expelling them in their milk; while chickens can offload any chemicals they are exposed to in their eggs. As most of the chemical calories tend to be stored in fats, the highest levels tend to be found in cheese, butter, egg yolks and cream.

Fruit and Vegetables - The main source of contamination for fruit and vegetables is from pesticides that are added during the growing process or to prolong life in storage. Oranges are regularly the most contaminated fruits in our supermarkets, but most of the chemicals stay in the peel. Fragile crops such as soft fruit and leafy salad vegetables also tend to be sprayed more heavily, as these will get a better price when they have an unblemished exterior. One of the most heavily used insecticides and fungicides for vegetables - organophosphates - also happens to act as a growth-promoter, so it is not surprising that a large number of vegetables are high in chemical calories.

Herbs - Some herbs can contain very high levels of chemical calories. The extensive spraying of herbs is probably due to their fragility. In fact, the sheer number of pesticides found on a couple of herbs during my research sent me straight to my kitchen to throw the relevant stocks away. Mint was the worst offender, in both fresh and dried form, followed by dill, parsley, coriander and rosemary.