So, remember how fat is one of the few factors consistently linked to cancer? Researchers are hard at work trying to figure out why, and here’s what they’re learning, according to a symposium on the obesity-cancer link:

1. Fat cells are evil. Texas scientist Stephen Hursting showed a Power Point slide of a fat cell, depicted as a globular circle with arrows sprouting out of it in all directions. Each arrow corresponded to a molecule that that the fat cell makes and dumps out into the body. Every one of these molecules is a bad actor that triggers deadly downstream effects, like inflammation, that lead to cancer.

The take home message? A fat cell, Hursting said, is “a veritable endocrine factory.” Translation: fat cells are like toxic chemical plants, churning out noxious substances that make us sick.

2. You can exercise to shed your excess fat cells. But this may not undo the damage you suffered by gaining too many fat cells in the first place.

Scientists like Hursting study the way our cells respond to the noxious substances that fat cells generate. It appears that exercise can counteract some of the damage wreaked by these chemicals on our cells. But the exercise effect isn’t the same as the effect of calorie restriction diets, which seem to boost health in powerful ways. Translation: as one of the speakers said, “A calorie in is not a calorie out.”

3. Drug companies like Novartis are hard at work designing drugs to save us from our own fat cells. A researcher from Novartis described a drug the company is taking through clinical trials right now, in fact, that could counteract some of the toxic effects of obesity. But here’s the kicker – drugs like these could improve our health, but they won’t make us skinnier. So here’s a question that fascinates me: When fat is healthy again, will it come back into style?

That’s a question that can’t be answered by anyone within these convention center walls. So it’s quite appropriate that the meeting is in Los Angeles this year, home of the thin-obsessed entertainment industry, which will probably determine whether or not Fat ‘N’ Healthy becomes the next big thing (so to speak). After all, Hollywood seems to have more influence on most ordinary people’s lives than the business that goes on at meetings like this.

And so, with that, I’m signing off from this year’s AACR meeting … and heading for the gym!