Have fish oil to burn those kilos around your belly Fish oil may burn fat faster than those fat-burning pills, leading to efficient weight loss in overweight or obese people in their 30s and 40s, Kyoto University researchers report. Fish oil activates receptors in the digestive tract, fires the sympathetic nervous system and induces storage cells to metabolise fat. Fat tissues do not all store fat. So called “white” cells store fat in order to maintain energy supply while “brown” cells metabolise fat to maintain a stable body temperature. Brown cells are abundant in babies but decrease in number with maturity into adulthood. A third type of fat cell — “beige” cells — have recently been found in humans and mice, and have shown to function much like brown cells. Beige cells also reduce in number as people approach middle age — and without these metabolising cells, fat continues accumulating for decades without ever being used..