It's something doctors and fitness experts say is dangerous: not just being overweight, but specifically carrying weight in the belly area.

“I tell people, when I'm speaking to them, to stand up, and if they look down and they can't see past their stomachs, to see their feet, then they are at risk,” said Leigh Ann Burns, an instructor of clinical medicine and oncology nutritionist with LSU Health Sciences Center.

“A woman with a 35-inch waist and a man with a 40-inch waist is considered to be abdominally over fat and would have a higher preponderance of visceral fat in the risk area,” said East Jefferson General Hospital fitness and nutrition expert Mackie Shilstone.

The risk area is what some people call "a beer or pot belly.”  Shilstone calls it "vat.”

“You see it more in post menopausal women and you see it more in men,” Shilstone said.  “It is called vat: visceral adipose tissue, and it is definitely a risk factor for type 2 diabetes and then eventually coronary vascular disease.”

Vat, which can also be described as a person’s being apple-shaped rather than pear-shaped, also puts you at higher risk for some types of cancer.

“That's where the risk factors are, not only for cancer, including breast cancers but also colon cancers, endometrial cancers, and even ovarian cancer,” said Burns.

Of course science has proven and we all know that when it comes to health and losing fat and vat, there is nothing that compares to cutting calories and exercising.  But a new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds that there is something simple you can do that might also help.

Nutritionist Dr. Heather Katcher spent time this year at as a dietetic intern at the Tulane School of Public Health.  In her recent research at Penn State University, she followed two groups of people who cut calories and discovered something   that surprised her.

“We found that both groups lost the same amount of weight, which was, on  average, 8 to 11 pounds,” Katcher said.

“We found that the people eating whole grains had a greater reduction in the percent body fat of their abdominal region.”

In essence, a calorie did not seem to be a calorie.  Substituting all that white bread and white rice and pasta for 100-percent whole wheat and whole grain versions of the same kind and same amount of food seemed to help the people in the study lose more of the fat in the dangerous belly area.

Further, making that small switch seemed to do something else.  People who ate the whole wheat or grain versions of the foods had a 38 percent reduction in c-reactive protein.  That protein can put you at risk for having a heart attack or stroke.  That's the same positive effect with whole wheat as taking the popular statin drugs.

Whole grains have other benefits as well.

“Diets that are high in fiber seem to make that area reduce in fat,” said LSU Health Sciences Center researcher Melinda Sothern.

“That's primarily because high fiber carbohydrates enhance the skeletal muscles’ ability to burn fat,” she added.  “Exercise will do the same thing.”

“People who switch from a refined carbohydrate, simple carbs kind of diet to a brown kind of diet with complex carbohydrates generally do feel fuller and they lose weight,” said family and alternative medicine specialist Henri Roca.

Roca said there is also a study that shows that whole grain rye might do something even more than whole grain wheat: reduce weight and inflammation and stress in the cells.

“The rye molecules in that particular grain changed how our DNA works,” Roca said.

“Food is medicine and rye as a grain is a better food medicine than oats potatoes or wheat.”

The experts say it is best for families to expose children to whole grain foods at an early age so they can get used to seeing and eating it.