Finally, A Few Good Words About Fat

Clearly annoyed by public’s (media’s) rising dread of "the obesity epidemic," Natalie Angier comes, not soon enough, to the defense of adipose tissue. "Fat is dynamic and mercantile," she writes, "exchanging chemical signals with the
brain, bones, gonads and immune system, and with every energy manager
on the body’s long alimentary train."
Angier reminds us that some adipose tissue is a  good thing, because adipose tissue where we store energy that can keep our bodies–and more importanly, our brains- going when there is a shortage of food. In fact, she says, evolutionary biologists have proposed that our relative plumpness
compared with our closest nonhuman kin, the chimpanzee, may help
explain our relative braininess.
Want more reasons to love fat? Read more in the New York Times.