'metabolically active' what's this mean?

[larabell]

Please could someone explain in very brief layman's terms what this means? I've just read an article that refers to visceral fat as being metabolically active.

[Peter Pedant]

Oh dear a late answer.

Yeah, confusing. I would not say that visceral fat is metabolically active as say, brown fat - which has lots of mitochondria, just lined up to do lots of chemical reactions.

Metabolism is the sum of all the chemical reactions that go on inside a cell. None of the reactions are special and can be reproduced inside a glass test tube.

if there are a great number of reactions or just a limited set but the reactions are going at a great rate - then the cell is said to be metabolically active.