visceral fat

Yahoo news is touting the benefits of big hips and butt: "A type of fat that accumulates around the hips and bottom may actually offer some protection against diabetes".

Unfortunately the result has only been examined in mice.

When I first saw this research - it seemed almost farcical: stressed out mice, eating junk food got fat.

Did the mice work 60 hour weeks - stopping by the McDonald's drive-thru on the way back to the lab? Did they manage to force two cohabiting mice to get a divorce? Or maybe moving from one mouse house to another was enough stress?

Not so farcical - almost all major media outlets around the world heralded this as "landmark" research" heralding a new way to lose fat without surgery.

We often assume that thin people are automatically healthier than overweight people, but a recent AP article questions this notion. Research involving the MRI scans of over 800 people has shown that many people who appear “thin” are actually storing large amounts of internal body fat around many of their vital organs.

Body fat has a mind of its own. It appears where it wants to, and seems to disappear (under great duress) from all the wrong places. Is there any rhyme or reason to fat distribution?

Here is a complete guide to body fat distribution.