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By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #84: Obesity's impact on the human body

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This week's "food for thought" excerpt comes from Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World (2003), by Greg Critser.

"At the most fundamental level, the obese body is like a four-cylinder car pulling a trailer full of bricks: it is, in the simplest sense, overloaded. Its 'cylinders' -- the heart and its ancillary arteries and veins -- are not built for pulling the extra weight, and so must work harder, straining to accommodate the load. Its fuel injection system -- the pancreas, the liver, and all of the organs that process fuel -- are similarly overloaded, unable to process enough energy or to get it to the proper place to be used to fire the body's key muscles. Its chassis -- the skeleton -- groans under the excess weight, and like a car with bad shocks, begins to jangle and bump with the most minute movements."