Eating a lot of food alone doesn’t make you fat, according to a new study. As unbelievable as it may sound, it turned out that plastics in shampoo bottles make people fat.
According to Sözcü’s report; In research conducted at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, scientists announced that they discovered 11 different chemicals that can affect our metabolism and contribute to weight gain in everyday products from shampoo bottles to kitchen sponges. Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology examined 34 different plastic products to see what chemicals they contained. It was stated that there are more than 55 thousand different chemical components in the products, and 11 of them affect metabolism.
THESE CHEMICALS ARE IN 629 ITEMS
Experts announced that these chemicals were found in 629 items. “Our experiments revealed that ordinary plastic products are not a relevant and underestimated factor behind overweight and obesity,” said Martin Wagner, associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Previous research has also suggested that some plastics contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals, also known as “obesogens,” that can affect our development and fertility. However, it now appears that they may also be responsible for weight gain.
THEY CONTRIBUTE TO FAT CELL DEVELOPMENT
That’s because chemicals from one-third of the plastic products examined in the new study contributed to fat cell growth in lab experiments. It was stated that chemicals from plastics enable to transform precursor cells into fat cells, and this situation causes the rapid proliferation of fat cells.
It has been determined that some plastic products contain substances that disrupt the known metabolism, while some do not, but still trigger the development of fat cells.
CONTRIBUTES TO OBESITY
The researchers stressed that the results mean that plastics currently contain unidentified chemicals that interfere with our bodies’ fat storage.
“This study means that different plastic chemicals from what we already know can contribute to overweight and obesity,” said Johannes Völker, one of the study’s authors.
It is known to have a major impact on some of the most common causes of death in the world, including obesity, cardiovascular disease and cancer, and alone is blamed for thousands of deaths worldwide.
Being overweight also increases our susceptibility to various infections, such as the effects of Covid-19.
About two billion people in the world are overweight, of which about 650 million are classified as obese.