Visceral fat isn’t your typical squishy fat. Rather it’s a harmful type of deep belly fat that lies deep in your abdominal cavity and wraps around organs like your liver. It also produces inflammatory chemicals called cytokines that trigger low-grade inflammation. Visceral fat differs from subcutaneous fat, the soft, jiggly kind of fat that lies closer to the surface and is pinchable.
You might not like excess subcutaneous fat, but visceral fat is the most harmful type for your health. This deeply situated fat releases inflammatory chemicals that negatively affect healthy tissues. Men tend to accumulate more visceral fat than women earlier in life, but after menopause women play catch up.
How harmful is visceral fat? Studies link visceral fat with a higher risk of many health problems including prediabetes, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and possibly some types of cancer. As you might expect, diet plays an important role in how much abdominal fat you have on your frame. If you’re trying to reduce deep belly fat, here are five of the worst foods you can eat.
Alcohol
In addition to lacking nutritional value, alcohol depletes your body of essential nutrients, such as B vitamins. Studies link even moderate alcohol consumption with the build-up of visceral fat. Alcohol affects enzymes that determine how your body stores fat, so you end up with more fat build-up deep in your abdominal cavity. Also, when your body is tied up burning off alcohol, it can’t burn fat as efficiently.
Moreover, alcohol inhibits the part of the brain that controls your appetite, so you eat more once you’ve had a few drinks. That’s why so many people gain weight after a night out drinking and end up with a “beer belly” if they do it habitually.
Soft Drinks
Soft drinks are almost as problematic as alcohol for boosting visceral fat build-up. Manufacturers of soft drinks sweeten these beverages with sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. Both contribute to visceral fat build-up. High-fructose corn syrup is particularly problematic since your body metabolizes it differently than sugar. Rather than following the pathway that glucose does, fructose goes straight to your liver, where it can cause fatty liver and an expanding waistline. However, table sugar, also known as sucrose, is half glucose and half fructose. So, you get fructose every time you eat table sugar.
Soft drinks are particularly problematic. One study found that drinking only one sweetened soft drink per day was enough to boost visceral fat. So, you should avoid soft drinks even in moderation. Although the study didn’t find that diet soft drinks increased visceral fat, there are concerns that artificial sweeteners may lead to weight gain by other means such as altering the gut microbiome and contributing to insulin resistance.
Foods That Contain Trans Fat
Trans fats are a type of fat in processed foods. Food manufacturers make them by adding hydrogen to vegetable oil to make it more solid. Then they add them to processed and packaged foods. Trans fat also contributes to visceral fat. Fortunately, a trans-fat ban went into effect in June 2018, but some foods can still contain small amounts. If you see partially hydrogenated oils on the ingredient list of a product, it contains small quantities of trans fat.
Are these small quantities of trans fat enough to cause issues with visceral fat? If you eat a mostly processed diet that contains trans-fat, you could still get enough to harm your health and your waistline since small quantities add up over time.
The solution? Limit the quantity of ultra-processed foods you eat and check labels to ensure a product contains no partially hydrogenated oils before dropping it into your shopping cart. Meat and dairy products contain some trans-fat naturally, but it’s unclear if they’re as harmful as the lab-made type in packaged foods.
White Bread
When you eat a slice of white bread, you absorb the sugars from that bread quickly, leading to an insulin spike that contributes to an increase in belly fat. A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that decreasing white bread consumption while eating a Mediterranean diet was linked to a drop in weight and belly fat. Unlike white bread, whole grain bread did not contribute to gains in visceral fat.
If you must eat bread, switch to wholegrain. White flour is also used in a variety of foods that contribute to visceral fat, including baked goods, pizza crust, chips, crackers, and pasta. Avoid all these as much as possible to reduce your body’s visceral fat burden.
French Fries
French fries rank as one of the worst foods you can put into your body. They’re linked with obesity and gains in belly fat. No wonder! White potatoes are a food that causes a sharp rise in blood sugar, and they’re fried in unhealthy oils, which also may contain trans-fat.
How bad are French fries for your waistline and health? One Harvard study that followed people for 20 years found those who regularly chowed down on French fries gained over 3 pounds of weight every four years, much of that being belly fat. Can you imagine how much heavier you’d end up if you gain that amount of weight over decades?
The Bottom Line
Your best bet for controlling visceral fat is to keep these foods out of your diet. Instead, focus on eating unprocessed foods, and switch soft drinks and alcohol for unsweetened green tea. Stay active, manage stress, and get enough sleep too to reduce visceral fat. It all counts!
References:
- Nauli AM, Matin S. Why Do Men Accumulate Abdominal Visceral Fat? Front Physiol. 2019 Dec 5;10:1486. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2019.01486. PMID: 31866877; PMCID: PMC6906176.
- Cigolini M, Targher G, Bergamo Andreis IA, Tonoli M, Filippi F, Muggeo M, De Sandre G. Moderate alcohol consumption and its relation to visceral fat and plasma androgens in healthy women. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 1996 Mar;20(3):206-12. PMID: 8653140.
- “Sugary soft drinks associated with higher visceral fat ….” 12 Jan. 2016, news.yahoo.com/sugary-soft-drinks-associated-higher-visceral-fat-according-110736080.html.
- Serra-Majem, L., & Bautista-Castaño, I. (2015). Relationship between bread and obesity. British Journal of Nutrition, 113(S2), S29-S35. doi:10.1017/S0007114514003249
- Lee JJ, Pedley A, Hoffmann U, Massaro JM, Levy D, Long MT. Visceral and Intrahepatic Fat Are Associated with Cardiometabolic Risk Factors Above Other Ectopic Fat Depots: The Framingham Heart Study. Am J Med. 2018 Jun;131(6):684-692.e12. doi: 10.1016/j.amjmed.2018.02.002. Epub 2018 Mar 5. PMID: 29518370; PMCID: PMC5964004.
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