fat cells in the body

[mansi]

Hi everyone,

One of my friend's 18 month old son is very very fond of eating butter. He can eat it just straight from the stick if he can get hold of one. but my friend never lets him eat any butter. she says that body fat at the later age (when her son grows up) is a function of number of fat cells that the body has. If her son eats more butter, he will develop more fat cells and will ahev a very fatty body ( on tendency to gain weight) when he grows up.

Frankly speaking I ahve no idea what she was talking about. is it possible by any chance.

and her son is very skinny( he is on 10 percentile on the weight chart).

I wonder if whatever she is doing is right.

Mansi

[fawnmarie]

Well - to some degree she's right - but not very. The body DOES need fats to function and survive and repair and grow, and limiting fats and proteins at such a young age is NOT a good idea. Butter is a very good fat for a small growing body.

MOST of our future fat cells are programmed in at an early age - but we really CAN add more fat cells later. There is a misconception that ALL the fat cells we will every have are already there by the time we are four or five - and that really isn't true. MANY of them are there - but we can certainly make more.

If she and/or her husband are both ectomorphs and naturally thin, he may be also naturally thin at 10% on the weight percentile.

On the other hand, if she is being neurotic and restricting his food to an extreme on several levels, you may have what amounts to child abuse/neglect on your hands. If she is giving him other foods freely - fruit, milk, veggies, proteins, etc. and just restricting the obviously fatty things, then that's probably not a problem. However, if you observe her restricting food to a ridiculous degree (i.e. counting calories for an 18 month old, insisting on skim milk or fat free dairy for him, refusing him other foods, or any other projective anorexic behavior) then an intervention is probably called for.

Not to dump this on you - but if she is an anorexic and "projecting" this behavior on her baby, it is not a good thing, and may cause permanent development problems.

On the other hand - if she just refuses to let him eat sticks of butter, but feeds him well otherwise, she's probably well within her boundaries as a parent. NOT letting a baby eat sticks of butter isn't a problem - I mean it's a pretty odd thing to eat. But if he's eating it because she is otherwise malnourishing him, well - maybe it needs to be looked into.

Just a thought.

Depending on how far this goes - she could be right, she could be wrong. Keepings his body fat low during his babyhood may help program him to be thinner when he's older. On the other hand, restricting food when he needs it desparately for growth and development may also result in 1) poor brain development and 2) an emotional eating disorder.

But like I said - if she feeds him plenty and well otherwise, it's probably not a big problem.

Fawn

[mansi]

hi fawn,
thanks for your answer. I was indeed surprised to know that fat cells are formed at such an early age.

Well my friend lets him eat everything else as much as he wants- fruits , milk, chicken an chiken nuggets. she just prevents him from eating butter straight. i thought that since her baby is so underweight, it may be a good idea to give him more butter specially since he likes it.

actually my friend has this weight problem- she can never loose wegiht easily. and she gets back whetever she has lost even when she starts eating normally for 1 week ( her 3 months of efforts to keep weight off will go waste in a week). I think she is very tired of her weight and does not want her son to suffer.

so she is little careful about givign too much butter. she likes to serve him very healthy food.

but still may be she is right. may be it will be good for him in the long run.

Thanks Fawn.
Mansi

[fawnmarie]

Yeah - that's what it sounds like.

It also sounds like she misinformed about fat and it's role in diet and weight loss. She's probably still trying to lose weight on a low-fat diet - and very few people can do that and maintain it. I mean, it's all over the news and medical reports - LOW FAT DIETS DON'T WORK. And when people compensate for the lack of fat by eating sugar, they just make it worse.

Sounds like she needs a copy of a book called Protein Power by Dan & Mary Eades, MD's. Might solve her problem AND let the baby off the hook, too!


Fawn

[Tarzanna77]

I listen to a talk-radio Dr who is very into a natural approach to medicine even though she is an MD. It's called www.Dukeandthedoctor.com in case anyone wants to check out their website.

Anyway, she has said that as we grow, we CREATE new fat cells until we are about 18. However, after that our fat cells only increase in size to make us fatter. (Until you are over 100 lbs overweight, then you do apparently make MORE fat cells.)

So the fatter you are as a child - the MORE fat cells you will have in life, and consequently it will probably be harder to maintain a normal weight. I just thought I would pass this along as something I found to be very interesting, having a small child of my own. --Jane

[Wenonae]

Tarzanna77 said:

I listen to a talk-radio Dr who is very into a natural approach to medicine even though she is an MD. It's called www.Dukeandthedoctor.com in case anyone wants to check out their website.

Anyway, she has said that as we grow, we CREATE new fat cells until we are about 18. However, after that our fat cells only increase in size to make us fatter. (Until you are over 100 lbs overweight, then you do apparently make MORE fat cells.)

So the fatter you are as a child - the MORE fat cells you will have in life, and consequently it will probably be harder to maintain a normal weight. I just thought I would pass this along as something I found to be very interesting, having a small child of my own. --Jane

Nice share!

[mansi]

Hi Tarzanna,
Thanks for the info.
But I just want to know that can the fat cells increase in a baby who is on 10 percentile on weight chart to such a level that he may have weight problems when he grows up??

I was surprised to know that.
Thanks
Mansi

[fawnmarie]

That's only true to a degree.

It used to be believed that we only "made" so many fat cells by the time we were adults and that none of them would ever die and we would never make more.

More recent research has shown that sometimes fat cells DO die off and we can certainly make more after reaching adulthood.

Although for the most part MOST of our fat cells are set to a certain number by adulthood, it isn't a hard and fast rule and this doctor needs to bone up on the more recent findings (less than five years, I think).

Fawn