The Secret Reason
We’re So Overweight
Too many carbs? Too little
willpower? Stop feeling guilty. The unrecognized
reason Americans are so chubby is because an important “slimming
fat” is missing from our foods.
Here’s the story...
 Forget
that business about “eating fat makes you fat.” It’s
just not true. Scientists have proven that foods like beef, cheese,
and dairy can be the path to lifelong weight control, but only
IF they contain one very important fat which has a slimming effect
on the human body.
Its name is conjugated linoleic acid
(CLA for short), and it’s one of the least understood of
the essential fatty acids (EFAs). Thanks to new research, we now
know that CLA’s job is to make sure the fats we eat are
converted into muscle and energy. Without CLA, dietary fat is
simply stored as new fat cells. And that, researchers say, is
why Americans are having so much trouble controlling their weight—because
CLA is missing from our domestic foods.
I first wrote about CLA in
the March, 2001 issue of ALTERNATIVES. That was
a few years ago, but the majority of overweight people in this
country are still waiting to hear the news. If you have friends
or loved ones who’d love to lose 20% of their flab, pass
them a Free copy of my Special Report, CLA: The Fat That Makes
You Slim.
The weight-loss discovery
of the century!
My research takes me all over the world—and
I’ve always wondered why obesity is much less of a problem
in other places. True, Americans eat a lot of junk food, but so
do many other countries that don’t have the obesity problems
we do. So what’s going on?
 Scientists
say the difference is CLA. It’s abundant in their foods,
yet absent in ours. Statistics show that obesity has increased
in America in direct proportion to the decrease of CLA in our
foods.
Few health experts have made this connection
because CLA is a recent discovery. Medical and nutritional texts,
except for the newest editions, contain no mention of it. We’re
still learning just how important it is, especially in the metabolism
of fatty foods.
By the 1990s, the CLA
content of U.S. milk was less than 1%.
Since the body can’t produce
CLA on its own, we must get it from our diet. (Chief sources are
beef, milk, and dairy products.) But researchers have found the
CLA content of these foods, if produced in the U.S., has fallen
to almost zilch since 1950. That’s around the time farmers
began feeding cattle and dairy cows in feedlots, instead of grazing
them on grass pastures. By comparison, the pasture-fed beef of
Australia contains 400% more CLA than ours!
To make matters worse, Americans are
eating less beef and dairy products in an effort to slim down.
But this is having a backfire effect, because it further reduces
their CLA levels. As a result, it’s even harder to lose
weight!
 But
eating more of these foods won’t help either. You still
won’t get enough CLA unless the products are pasture-raised,
which can be pretty pricey.
The best short-term solution is CLA
in supplement form. Some pretty impressive research has shown
they can produce a dramatic reduction in body fat. Early experiments
with mice found that adding CLA to their diet caused an 88% reduction
in body fat in just 6 weeks. And human studies are also amazing.
How would you like to
lose 20% of your body fat?
In both men and women, CLA supplements
produced body fat reductions of 20 percent, on average, in just
12 weeks. More dramatic results are possible with a few eating
changes and a little exercise.
New CLA studies are currently underway
and ALTERNATIVES will be following them closely.
A few cutting-edge companies are experimenting with ways to increase
CLA levels in milk, butter, cheese, eggs, and beef. But it still
will be years before any of these products are ready for the market.
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