Brain cells come and go, but fat cells live forever.






One of the questions people in Eastern Europe always ask me is, “Are people in America very fat?”

It’s a difficult question to answer for me, because in southern California, around the city of Los Angeles and Hollywood where I lived, many people are thin, muscular, and in great shape. They eat healthy, organic foods and they exercise regularly.

In other parts of the country, however, many people are extremely fat. They eat fatty, oily, fried foods, high calorie snacks, lots of fast food, and they almost never exercise. These people often weigh more than 150 kilograms, and you can see them moving slowly along the streets as if walking is a very difficult task for them.

One of my Ukrainian friends told me a story about when he flew on an airplane in America. The man next to him on the plane was so fat that he had to sit in two seats. My friend was shocked - he had never seen a person so fat in his entire life.

Because of the large number of overweight and obese people in America, diets are hugely popular. There are hundreds of diet books, diet theories, and diet foods that people can buy. Diets are a billion dollar business in America, but they rarely work the way they say they will. Often people who go on diets and lose a lot of weight end up gaining all of the weight back plus more.

Scientists have wondered about this problem for many years. Why do people gain all the weight back from their previous diets? Why can’t fat people stay thin?

Some say it is because of bad eating habits, some say it’s in our genes, and other doctors say that diets slow our metabolisms, therefore when we finish the diet and eat normal again our bodies are not able to process all the calories, and we store more fat.

Now, however, scientists think they have discovered the real reason. A new scientific study shows that the number of fat cells in our bodies cannot decrease. No matter how much you diet, you cannot decrease the number of fat cells that your body has, you can only remove the fat that is stored within the fat cells.

This is why it is so difficult to lose weight and prevent it from returning. Even if you lose a lot of fat, your empty fat cells will always be trying to store more fat. The study showed that even extreme surgical procedures, like gastric bypass surgery in which the size of the stomach is decreased, cannot reduce the number of fat cells in the body.

What is even more interesting is that the study found that the number of fat cells in our bodies is determined by age 20. After age 20 you cannot significantly increase or decrease the number of fat cells in your body. This means that our eating and exercise habits when we are young directly affect our bodies when we are older.

This is an important study for Americans, because children in America are becoming fatter and fatter. Many children have sedentary lifestyles, in which they sit on the couch watching television or playing video games most of the day, they do not play sports, they don’t play outside in nature, and they eat unhealthy, sugary, fatty snacks. Now we are beginning to understand the consequences of this behavior. A healthy or unhealthy lifestyle begins in childhood.

This reveals an important principle, not only for American children, but for Eastern Europe’s children as well. The habits and attitudes that we acquire in childhood directly affect our lives as adults. A good upbringing will prepare a child to be successful in all areas of his life, whereas a bad upbringing will give a child many disadvantages in adulthood.

In America, not only are inactivity and obesity problems that many children have today, but there are other major problems that children are not being warned about correctly. Teenage sexuality is a huge problem in America today, as it is in Ukraine. Teenagers are having sex at younger and younger ages, they are having children and spreading diseases and receiving deep psychological scars that they are not prepared for and which they cannot understand at such a young age.

In America this problem has led to huge numbers of singles mothers, a high divorce rate, children being raised by only one parent, the spread of deadly diseases like AIDS, and many other social problems related to deviant sexuality and poverty. These social problems are also associated with drug use, increased crime rates, abuse, and an increase in psychological disorders.

Of course, most people in America do not have these problems, but the number of US citizens with problems related to these issues is growing daily. The divorce rate in America is already over 50%. In the long run, these social problems will affect everyone in some way.

The same thing, unfortunately, is happening in Eastern Europe, and if the country does not change its moral and social attitudes soon, then Eastern Europe’s youth will suffer the same consequences that many of America’s youth have suffered. Eastern Europe cannot allow its youth to be raised by pop culture and capitalism.

Capitalism is an economic theory, and democracy is a political theory, but these are not moral or cultural systems. The post Soviet Union needs to find a way to balance its new political and economic world view with its old moral values and traditions. The freedom that Democracy brings and the money and prosperity that Capitalism brings are worthless if the society is not healthy and moral.

But like fat cells, these moral and cultural ideals must be instilled in childhood. It is very difficult to change the way an adult thinks. In the same way that you cannot decrease the number of fat cells in an adult, you cannot take away the habits and attitudes of most adults. It takes a radical experience to change an adult’s mind, and it also takes a willingness to change.

The good news, however, is that if you raise your children in a healthy manner, physically and psychologically, then they will have a good chance to be healthy for their entire lives. Let us hope that Eastern Europeans will be wise enough to take the good things from American culture, without absorbing the bad. People should pursue an American lifestyle without the fat.