 Gynoid lipodystrophy, known colloquially as cellulite, is the orange peel type or cottage cheese-like dimpling of the skin on the thighs and tushes of the majority of women. Since it basically results from excess fat storage, attention is turned to spermine and spermidine as potential culprits. And indeed rubbing a spermine-trapping molecule on your thighs apparently results in a significant drop in thigh volume, circumference, and cellulite scores. This potential culprit, spermine, was first discovered in human semen back in the 1600s, but only recently quantified in food. Top sources in the American diet, ground meat and lunch meat, such as ham, turkey, bologna, salami, as well as green peas, which is also the primary source of spermidine along with cheese, such as American and cheddar. So would eating some cheesy peasy meat casserole make cellulite worse? It's never been tested, but if it did, this could be one of the mechanisms. The reason this study was funded by the National Cancer Institute is not because of cellulite, but because of the concern that this whole class of compounds may increase cancer risk. For example, intake of polyamines like spermine was recently associated with increased risk of colorectal polyps. The other cellulite theory has to do with the hormone adiponectin. If you biopsy the fat in the gluteal region of women with and without cellulite, there seems to be less adiponectin expression in the cellulitic butt fat, so maybe adiponectin is protective. How do you keep adiponectin levels from dropping? Don't eat a sausage and egg breakfast, which leads to a drop in levels within hours compared to a vegetarian meal. When switching to a vegetarian diet, appears to increase protective adiponectin levels 19%. They compared a meat-free, egg-free diet of vegetables, grains, beans, fruits, and nuts with animal products limited to a maximum of one portion of low-fat yogurt a day, compared to the conventional diabetic diet. Though they were made to eat the exact same number of calories, the veg group lost more weight, lost more waste, lost more cholesterol, more sub-Q fat, more belly fat. And subcutaneous fat is what makes up cellulite. So a plant-based diet could be expected to decrease cellulite, but we won't know for sure until it's experimentally tested directly.