A biochemical clue as to why vegetarians tend to be significantly slimmer than the rest of the population.
How to Upregulate Metabolism, 5.0 out of 5 based on 2 ratings
While soy and turmeric can suppress human fat cells, not all vegetarians eat curried tofu, so this still doesn’t explain why vegetarians are so much slimmer, on average, than meateaters. Well, we’re getting closer to an answer
The reason I chose to major in biophysics rather than biochemistry is because of diagrams like this. This is the simplified version of human metabolism. The real deal is controlled is by about 25,000 genes. Let me focus in on one in particular. This appears to be the enzyme that does much of the heavy lifting, Carnitine Palmitoyl Transferase. CPT here, shovels the fat that we eat, into the furnaces in our cells.
The more active it is, the more fat we burn. That’s where a vegetarian diet seems to come in. Here’s our man CPT, significantly upregulated in vegetarians, boosted by about 60%. We’re not sure why, but that may help explain why those eating vegetarian are so slim.
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by veganmontreal.
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Please feel free to post any ask-the-doctor type questions here in the comments section and I’d be happy to try to answer them. And check out theother videos on vegetarians. Also, there are 1,449 other subjects covered in the rest of my videos--please feel free to explore them as well!
For some context, please check out my associated blog post: Boosting Gut Flora Without Probiotics.


