A common occurrence for adults is to have a hanging gut aka beer belly. This squishy mass of fat impedes movement, requires a new set of clothes, looks ugly and annoys the owner, resisting all attempts at removal unless surgery is used. We learn to tolerate it but what causes this spongy pestilence? This page will try to illuminate some basic processes started by incorrect dietary patterns and lifestyle choices that lead to liver problems, weight gain and beer belly. Keep in mind that bodily processes are convoluted and difficult to conclusively trace from start to finish. Take what you're about to read with a grain of salt and please do extra research. That being said, let's dive right in.
Liver deals with fat processing, storage and retrieval but also disposes of toxins, getting damaged and using nutrients to shield itself during their disassembly. The gist of the problem is that too many toxins and too few nutrients damage the liver to the point its capability of storing and burning fat is impaired, which causes the body to simply squish as much fat as possible into fat cells until the liver recovers. In case toxin ingestion continues, the liver never gets to deal with body fat and actually becomes a fat storage vessel itself, leading to obesity and other health problems stemming from it. This would mean belly fat is a symptom of damaged liver.
Despite never drinking alcohol, I actually got a beer belly too in my 20s because I was gorging on candy, which was an introduction to serious problems with my liver. In my mid-30s I'll finally kick the habit and get an abdominal ultrasound, with the intern doing it commenting that "your liver seems a bit lighter than expected", meaning it was being overworked but not to the point I had to take medication for it. My cholesterol levels were slightly increased as well, probably for the same reason. So, how does candy cause liver damage? Through various sweet toxins.
One such toxin is fructose, or fruit sugar. Being a simple carbohydrate, fructose is extremely sweet, melts on tongue right away, digests and enters the bloodstream almost immediately, after which point liver starts neutralizing it, turning it into things such as formaldehyde, an embalming substance. Every bit of fructose takes a while to sort out, so if there's a constant stream of fructose coming in, the body creates a stockpile of it that slowly upsets the internal systems and leads to long-term inflammation processes. This is a highly simplified version of it but essentially means that foods we eat have a tremendous impact on our wellbeing and we should do our best to vet our food before eating it.
Fructose is found in nature as well, but never in isolation. For example, apples and oranges have fructose, so how come eating those doesn't cause liver damage? It turns out that water, dietary fiber and vitamins found in fruit largely neutralize the negative effects of fructose by satiating and providing a buffer. So, instead of a wave of fructose hitting the liver, it's more of a steady, manageable trickle that actually stimulates the liver. There's a great lecture "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" by Dr. Robert Lustig that talks about fructose; it's full of biochemical formulas but it's very informative and worth watching several dozen times. So, why is fructose so common in processed foods?
When distilled and used in processed foods as a cheap sweetener, fructose becomes a real danger and a toxin but also stimulates the appetite. Therefore, the real reason why there's so much fructose in processed foods and drinks is that it makes you hungry for more, leading to increased sales for the food manufacturer. It's a cynical but ultimately perfectly logical result of food being made in a boardroom and laboratory rather than kitchen. In processed foods, dietary fiber is removed too as it makes foods a hassle to handle and a nightmare to chew; food manufacturers simply get rid of dietary fiber to make foods chewy and instantly edible, again to increase the speed at which the customer can eat. Guess the function of dietary fiber in natural foods – it acts as a buffer for fructose.
The rabbit hole goes much deeper than that, because various industries collude to create as many marketable products no matter what their health impact. For example, corn growers in the U.S. get government subsidies for corn, which they can't sell on the market but they can turn it into HFCS, high fructose corn syrup, which is then added to food to hide manufacturing defects and increase appetite. The food industry gets a sweetener that's cheap and 20% sweeter than table sugar while the corn producers get to dump their subsizided corn; both parties rub their hands but the consumers can only rub their belly fat.
How do you deal with fructose and other toxins that ruin the liver? First of all, read ingredient labels. Second, research ingredients one by one, understand how they metabolize in the body before eating them and avoid the most toxic ones. Third, eat anything with fructose or other liver-impairing substances after a meal, not on its own. Fourth, replace processed foods that have fructose with fruit. That's it, there's no need to panic or do drastic steps, such as joining a gym or running a marathon, simply help your liver recover and it will start draining the fat cells. If you can, add a bit of light exercise, such as riding a bike, swimming or walking, that you can do daily. Avoid alcohol and drink it on special occasions, such as for your birthday.
So, why is the blob of free fat on your stomach called "beer belly"? Alcohol (ethanol) is actually a toxin that damages the liver just like fructose, as Dr. Lustig explains, so by drinking alcohol you'll likely develop the same symptoms of metabolic disturbance though you can see how the name can mislead; it's about damage to the liver, not any single source of damage. Aspartame and other alcohol-based sweeteners are similar toxins too, but the idea is that they have no calories, with the irony being that they're meant to help you lose weight. If you can't live without sweetness, try using stevia, a plant-based sweetener that has no calories.
Keep in mind that liposuction or surgery to remove the excess fat won't solve the underlying issue but simply remove the buffer fat cells your body used to help the liver. Without belly fat cells, the body can often start creating new ones in unusual places, such as on the back. Beer belly is simply a symptom of a problem, so deal with the problem itself rather than obsessing over a symptom. Once you limit the toxin intake, your liver will start repairing, which you should check out through an abdominal ultrasound. You can't rush this process. Supplementing with vitamin E helps the liver recover as well.
The stomach is another problem. In an adult man, it can hold 75ml, which is about a third of a cup. Yep, that little, and it's miniscule in teenagers, kids and babies. If more food is eaten in one sitting, the stomach gives itself the authority to extend and expand, pushing out all organs out of the way. This is because the survival instinct in humans prioritizes any extra food, as it sees impending starvation at all times.
A hanging gut that consists of excess fat is then exacerbated by this stomach DLC as the abdominal muscles are no longer enough to keep everything tidy and the stomach pushes it all out, no matter how much you try to straighten out and suck it in.
Throughout history, we've been starved for calories. Only with the advent of industrial food processing did we get more calories than we could ever chew through. The downside is that operators of those industries want maximum profit, which means maximum consumption. The food quality had to be arranged to meet profit projections, turning more and more store-bought edibles into goop or powder with each passing year. Why? It's easy to manipulate goop and powder to have the exact amount of fructose, aspartame etc. as needed.
In a sense, beer belly represents a valuable fat deposit that can save your life in case of a catastrophic failure of society but how likely is that? In most cases, belly fat is a nuisance we desperately want to get rid of. Proper dieting will get you there but, as the intern said, "liver takes 6-8 months to recover". So, if you're addicted to sweets, soda, fruit juices, ice creams etc. like I was, expect at least 4-5 years before you kick all those habits and see a dent in your belly fat. Sorry, man, that's how it works. In the meantime, you can try eating half a cucumber a day, since it acts as a diuretic, helping your body flush out a bit more water weight, just to give you that sensation of success.