Sacré bleau! The French mice did not get fat!
Evidently it’s a combination of high fat AND carbs that makes the mice fat. Yet the author is blaming the fat, not the combination.
10
So only mice eating high-fat diets became obese, and yet no diet, even if high in fat, led to significant weight gain? (I’d quote but I’m on mobile.) Wut??
And it’s mice, but *not* female mice, and we don’t know what kind of fat, or carbs, etc. etc. etc.
This piece really didn’t need to be written.
10
This article would be much improved if it was linked to the other research; some of which contradicts these results. Also my take is that the author just basically summarized the research article with no critique!!! Take more time on this before it is published there was very little effort here. Disappointing and frustrating
8
“It looks like consuming high-fat diets, if they aren’t extremely high fat, leads to weight gain, IF YOU ARE A MOUSE.”
(emphasis added)
5
Animal studies are outmoded. But there is a whole greedy industry devoted to producing animals for this sort of "science." And our tax dollars and university tuitions feed it. In its 2016-2020 Strategic Plan, the NIH said,"animal models often fail to provide good ways to mimic disease or predict how drugs will work in humans, resulting in much wasted time and money while patients wait for therapies." It seems much more logical to study food culturally, in humans, and come to conclusions about obesity and diet that way.
6
Could it be be that mice prefer the taste of fat so they eat too much of it and get fat, while humans prefer the taste of sugar, so we eat too much of that and get fat? In any case, I am not basing my diet on mouse study.
5
Want a tie breaker?
Forget fat for a second, and consider cancer.
The metabolic processes affected by white flour, sugar, & processed carbs leading to inflammation, etc are very likely cancer causing as well. As obesity and diabetes have gone up, same with cancer. Although you can be skinny, yet w metabolic syndrome anyway.
After consulting an integrative cancer treatment practice, besides chemotherapy, I set about changing my system from 'hospitable to cancer' to NOT hospitable. I went on low fat AND low-processed-carb diet (80% organic vegetarian whole foods, w healthy vegetable fats like nuts, avocado) and small amounts of animal protein, mostly deep sea wild caught fish. Plus nutritional supplements like reishi powder, super greens, matcha.
The modern western sugar & carb diet is too infamatory and nutrient deprived, and is killing us.
10
The cattle industry seems to find carbohydrate does just fine to fatten their livestock.
3
And continuous antibiotics to wreck their microbiomes.
2
@Matt
Intelligent, adaptable omnivores such as mice are probably more relevant to the study of human behavior and metabolism than castrated ruminants are.
@childofsol
DK if rats specifically bred for many generations for inclusion in experiments can be considered in this way.
1
Another item that leads to obesity is thyroid function. We have plenty of animal studies on the dampening impact of fluoride on thyroid function. However, the most recent and most alarming study is a human study looking at lab results of millions of Canadians. Across the board, iodine levels is lower in fluoridated communities. Even excluding those already diagnosed with thyroid disease, 18% of the Canadian population had a lower iodine metabolism in the range of sub-clinical hypothyroidism because of 'optimally' fluoridated water. So yes, our water might be making some of us fat.
Ashley J. Malin, Julia Riddell, Hugh McCague, Christine Till. Fluoride exposure and thyroid function among adults living in Canada: Effect modification by iodine status. Environment International. Volume 121, Part 1, December 2018, Pages 667-674. [Online Ahead of Print] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041201830833X
4
This made me think of the nutrition experiment my 5th graders used to do at school. We had 2 white laboratory rats provided by The Dairy Council, who provided the rats for 6 weeks. One rat was given “junk” food while the other received a nutritious diet. The students’ hypothesis was that the test rat, the one eating junk food, would get fat. They were surprised when the opposite happened and the test rat did not gain, and sometimes lost weight, while the control rat, who was eating nutritious foods grew at a normal rate. The reason, of course, was that the test rat was receiving “empty calories.” His diet was devoid of any nutritional value, and because we didn’t want him to die, after 4 weeks he was placed on the same diet as the control rat. At that time, he started growing and gaining weight.
Of course, humans, even when we eat junk food, don’t eat diets completely lacking in nutrition. However, this experiment showed our students what could happen and how important a healthy diet is.
1
Ok, then why do I always see obese children sipping on gigantic barrels of sugary soda bigger than their heads? Perhaps they ate fat for lunch, and the sugary dessert isn't the reason for their obesity.
3
@Wide Pickens There a lot of studies done on mice that don't correlate to humans, even those based on nutrition. Either way, we know that sugar and fat can make you gain weight, ideally this study will act as a foothold for some other study.
1
Certainly a very interesting outcome. From my perspective, this would not so much place a red flag upon a high fat diet so much as it would red flag future and past mouse studies. Obviously, the mouse physiology is not similar to a human's, at least not in the sense where metabolic nuance would be concerned. I can tell you that a high fat, low carbohydrate diet works wonders for me in the area of weight maintenance and/or weight loss. As a matter of fact, my objective with such a diet approach isn't weight maintenance at all, but to get metabolically in line. However, easy weight loss is a simple by-product of that approach.
Too bad it doesn't work that way for mice. Of course, there's also the dimension of what sorts of fats comprised the high fat mouse diet...among other relevant questions.
8
Many commenters have already pointed to the problem of drawing correlations between mice nutritional response and that of humans. I would just add that mice are genetically adapted to a diet of high carb grains as a main food source. Human diet adaptation is much more complex.
While the standard theory goes that humans first started eating grains 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture, this was only in some parts of the world. Many populations continued with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle until much more recently. And of course as human populations dispersed further around the globe, their local diets have diverged. This is all now part of our genetic makeup as well.
There are probably useful comparisons to be made between mice and people. Diet and nutrition isn't one of them. Because of the great diversity in human diet that has developed in the last 50K years and this effect on genetic adaptation, the idea that we can come up with an ideal human diet for everyone seems misguided. Rather there needs to be focus on developing individualized diets. I know for myself, by simply eliminating wheat products, my lifelong asthma has disappeared. Just an example.
9
The ketogenic diet is a scientifically proven diet not only to lose weight but also to successfully treat type 2 diabetes and epilepsy (and even cancer). Eating high amount of saturated fat and 0 carbs, I have lost 30 pounds in an 8-month period. Read Dr. David Perlmutter's Grain Brain, Christine Cronau's the Fat Revolution, or Nora Gedgaudas' Primal Fat Burner. They are real and trustworthy scientists who are not paid by obscure sources (mill industry, farmaceutical industry)
5
@Benito555 Current studies are indicating that the ideal diet is highly individual. I cut all carbs out of my diet for 4 weeks. Not only did I want to murder everyone around me constantly, I didn't lose a single pound. I'm glad that you found a diet that works well for you, but it's not going to work well for everyone.
14
@Benito555
It is a diet! It is a diet that works for some. I tried it and not only i felt miserable and tired I also did not lose any weight. When i stick with dier rich in fiber and some protein and some fat i feel good and maintain healthy weight. Jetogenic diet is just another diet that may work for some people.
3
@Benito555 Keto is not a healthy diet. You will loose weight and destroy your kidney's and promote heart disease. the " Grain Brain" has been debunked as junk science. They are not trusted scientists. David Perlmutter is a charlatan pushing his expensive phony supplements. Since the number 1 cause of death is heart disease and the no oil whole food plant diet has proven to prevent and reverse heart disease it should be the baseline diet. Dairy and animal protein with their cholesterol and saturated fat have been shown to be the driver of 14 of the 15 leading causes of death and disability not grain.
2
The headline should read "Which Kinds of Foods Make Mice Fat?" That would be accurate. Mice aren't people and what happens in mice doesn't reflect what will happen in humans.
8
This article is not very well-written, and is a bit confusing. However, the author links to the study itself. Some of the questions in many comments that I've read are answered in the "Highlights" and "Summary." It has been some time, but what I learned from my Exercise and Sport Science degree as well as many years in the fitness/wellness industry and as a clinical specialist in medical thereafter, plus countless hours in various certifications is time and again confirmed by study after study, including this one. The main points are, caloric totals being equal, the makeup of the macronutrients in the diet only caused weight gain in the mice that had high fat diets at 60% fat. The diets higher in fat than 60% didn't cause weight gain because the mice self-regulated the total amount of food that they ate...the fat caused greater satiety would be my assumption, they got full and stopped eating. Further, only the high fat diets caused the mice to get "happy" - not even high sucrose diet did that. If this correlates to humans, it makes sense why Paleo-style and Keto diets work for so many and at the same time, high whole-grain + high fruits and veggies work for others. I am of the latter although I don't shy away from small amounts of real butter or meat when I want it. I cook most of my meals from scratch. Eat real foods (no boxes!), eat a lot of veggies, keep calories in check, move every day - it's that simple.
3
@ABC agreed! However, it is not that simple. It is only simple for some people but for a lot obese people weight loss is a mental challenge more than a diet challenge.
2
I am dismayed that so many comments take aim at the author. This work illustrates the limits of science and complexity of obesity research in general. The apparently simple findings in mice probably do not generalize to humans as many reader have pointed out, reinforcing Ms Reynolds' clear disclaimer. In my view many different diets can be helpful in loosing weight, but the real issue is promoting and sustaining a more comprehensive lifestyle change to keep the weight off. And genetics differences among both mice and human are likely active components of the problem of obesity.
2
@Lyle Allen You’re so right.
1
I can't believe I wasted one of my monthly articles on this. There was no useable info here. Only vague, poorly summarized research. You can not look at this article and get any idea which diet causes weight gain and which did not.
6
"The scientists hope to include female mice in later experiments." Uh-huh. As usual research dollars go to male problems. The word "hope" means "won't".
7
Me, my husband , and neighbor have been eating low carb, high fat, (whole, fresh food—not processed) avoiding sugar, since March. I’ve lost 13 lbs (5’2” 122) husband lost 24 lbs. (5’10” 176) and neighbor lost 120lbs (350 to 230). Bloodwork all came back good, we work out and enjoy a very active life (me and hubby age 62 and neighbor is 34) Eating guidelines are bought and paid for. Americans just keep getting fatter and sicker.
10
@Debbie One of the issues is that we keep collectively attempting to approach the problem with one-size-fits-all solutions. That's great that a low-carb diet works for you. Not only did I not lost a single pound cutting carbs out of my diet, I wanted to kill everyone. I'm 60 pounds overweight, but all of my bloodwork numbers are good.
3
@Eskarina1000 so true.. just because diet works for one person it does not mean it will work for another. At the end calorie is a calorie. If you have caloric deficit you will lose weight. Now the key is to find a diet that keeps you happy, healthy and full to be able ro achieve caloric deficit.
2
@Eskarina1000 I hear you... and wish you luck in finding a lifestyle diet that works for you. Low carb, high fat, protein (10%, 65%, 25%) has been that for me. Tried SO many other options, always starving, no changes. With keto, I’ve lost 20 lbs in 8 weeks... have taken a few breaks, for vacation/holidays... always feel better (no bloat, less inflammation) when I’m back on. For me, higher fat = satiety and I eat fewer calories happily = weight loss. Am waiting on bloodwork to see if this diet has also impacted my high blood sugar levels. Agreed diets are individual. My husband is a carb eating machine, very active and fit. Whatever works for your body, it is a relief to finally find it!!! That’s why I think so many of us are celebrating keto. Wish you well.
1
So, eat a high fat diet, get fat!
3
@Shenonymous ...if you're a mouse. That's probably the most important takeaway from this article.
2
@Shenonymous I’ve been on a high fat / moderate protein and low carb/sugar diet for two years and I’ve lost 57 lbs and my doctor took me off my diabetes / blood pressure and cholesterol. All the weight loss led to increased energy which helped me start running again. I’m running a full marathon next month. So no.
3
@gotahugehook
It is great it worked for you. It did not work for me but diet high in fiber with moderate protein worked great for me. Diets should be individualized.
1
This poorly written article makes me think that Gretchen Reynolds is a stealth consultant for the sugar and refined carbohydrate industries. sent in to write articles like this, which insinuate that all fat in the diet causes weight gain. 'Super high fat diet' and 'high fat diet' are too vague as terms for any reader to be able to parse the differences in them. The average reader will only assume that FAT in general causes weight gain.
11
@Kedi So agree with you. First thing is that mice metabolism is equal to human metabolism. Also, what kinds of fat were they fed? Mid chain, long chain, and what were the sources of those fats? This is the problem with these types of articles the take away is that fat makes you fat--which is so WRONG.
2
@Kedi Maybe, but she needn't necessarily be. Isn't she simply regurgitating what the study revealed? Now, maybe the study was conducted on behalf of General Mills or Kraft somebody...but also of importance to me, was the type of fat that comprised the high fat mouse diet.
Did they add another group whose sugar intake consisted of majority High fructose Corn Syrup? That's really what makes you fat :D
2
eat too much - get too fat
eat too little - get too skinny
eat moderate amounts of everything - stay normal
8
@AMA that’s way too simplistic. You just can’t say that. In most cases Eat too little - just Stay fat... unless you’re talking Long Term starvation.
1
These snippets of research often presented by Gretchen Reynolds usually do a disservice to the reader. Besides presenting work that is extremely premature, research in mice is a terrible analog for humans across most areas of study, this one is no exception. Studies in humans have repeatedly shown excess sugar consumption leads to various disease states, while fat does not. When you eat more fat you have earlier satisfaction and stop eating. When you eat more sugar, you crave more sugar, because sugar triggers a large insulin spike that clears glucose from your blood, making you hypoglycemic, thus craving more. Fat does not trigger an insulin spike.
13
Some years ago, I decided that I was too heavy and needed to drop about 30 pounds. A little research showed that one pound was the equivalent of 3500 calories. If you consume 3500 calories more than you burn, you will gain one pound. If you burn 3500 calories more than you consume, you will lose a pound. The choice of what foods the calories come from really don't matter all that much. At the time, my daily routine included a hard roll with my mid morning coffee and a bag of chips in the afternoon, for a total of 410 calories a day. I stopped taking those and didn't consciously change anything else. If someone brought donuts to the office, I had a donut. I still had my ice cream in the evening.
I reached my weight loss goal within a week or so of the predicted date.
What this tells me is that if you consume more calories than you burn, you will gain weight, and vice versa. The thing to pay attention to is what those calories are made of. If you are going to cut back, cut back on the cookies and Dorito's, not on the fresh fruits and vegetables.
Oh, and don't forget to exercise. This will help make sure that the calories you consume will go to build muscle and bone, rather than that nice , comfy roll of fat around your waist.
2
@Marty
If it's just about consumption and burning of calories, then rolls, chips doritos, cookies vs. fresh fruit and vegetables is irrelevant.
But you've already made distinctions between types and qualities of foods. If types and qualities of foods feed back on metabolism, appetite, etc, then we have already moved past a simple "calories in, calories out" system.
12
@Marty
All things being equal... Maybe!
@The Pooch Weight loss is primarily dependent on calories (not all, but primarily). I think why Marty was saying to cut out the unhealthy foods is bc if you cut out the healthy foods, you simply won't be getting the nutrients you need for overall health even if you lose weight.
1
"Even super-high-fat diets, consisting of more than 60 percent fat, did not lead to significant weight gains, and the mice on those diets consumed less food over all than their counterparts, presumably because they simply could not stomach so much fat." Huh? What then is an extremely high fat diet?
6
@eyny
I'm confused by this, too.
First, we learn that only mice on high-fat diets ('up to 80% fat) got fat. But the mice on extremely high-fat diets (more than 60% fat) did not become obese. Huh?
1
Did the mice exercise? Did they smoke? Were they on any other medications with known adverse side effects? Were they city or country mice??
16
I was diagnosed with full blown diabetes. My weight was fluctuating between 260 and 275. My medicated blood sugar was 150, my A1C was in the 8’s. I cut out most carbohydrates, including potatoes, all grains, and fruits. My diet consisted mostly of a tomato avocado onion cucumber and solid white tuna, steak, sausage chicken etc. That was March 2027. I am now 200 lbs. My unmediated blood sugar is 100. My A1C is 4.6. So please take this for what it is worth.
12
@Mark this works for you but let’s say for someone like me with no issues with diabetes high fat diet like ketogenic diet just does not work. Thus what works for one petson may not work for another. I lost weight eating veggies and fruits and have been maintaining 130 pounds with 15% body fat for three years feeling healthy and satisfied. Does it mean that high fiber, low fat diet would do rhe same for you? Probably not. You are doing amazing !!! And I admire people who find a diet that works for them individually.
3
If an animal consumes more calories than they use, the excess is stored for later. That's an evolutionary advantage when the availability of food is variable. Proteins and carbohydrates can be stored as carbohydrate (glycogen) or fat.
Because of the details of the metabolic pathways, fat can only be stored as fat. It can't be converted to carbohydrate. The result that was obtained was the one that would be expected by anyone who understands metabolism. But the nature of the scientific process demands that the experiment be done, even if you're sure that you know the answer.
That's the difference between science and politics.
2
@David
Thermodynamics is true but tells us nothing about _why_ an animal is eating excess. Feelings of hunger or satiety are also the results of metabolic pathways, which have also been subject to natural selection. Overeating to the point of disability or disease would have been just as mal-adaptive as undereating to the point of starvation.
1
For me, the answer was just a matter of willpower. I had total cholesterol of 263 (at age 63); the doc wanted me to take statins. Instead, I quit eating sugar (even summer fruits) and wheat (and rice and potatoes, too). Six months later, my total cholesterol was 197, and I'd lost 10% of my body weight (BMI 23 now) and my blood pressure was down to 105/70 (before, it had been an acceptable 115/75).
I'm sold. I eat as much as I like. I fry my eggs in butter. No worries. I miss pizza, and sandwiches, and good bread, but it's worth it. No sugar. No wheat.
7
Sugar. Carbs. Obvious.
3
Poor mice. Once again using an animal model that does not fit a human model. Exercise, eat right, and I am a believer in recent studies that propose hormones are responsible for weight gain and obesity. Insulin and Leptin are two of the major players in weight gain. We're not getting fat because we're eating more, we're eating more because we're getting fat! And so it goes. I do not think there is an easy answer yet.
4
My mother was a lifetime member of Weight Watchers, and a wise woman. Over the years I have shared her advice with many people. Without fail, those who were able to follow it had some success. The Advice? If you want to lose weight, eat less."
6
@Joan Greenberg
"Eating less" comes as a downstream effect from "eating better." Nutritional quality drives satiation.
9
@Joan Greenberg Many people will fail if they are merely counting calories and the calories consumed consist of low-fat foods. When I start adding more fat to my diet I lose weight. why? Because I'm sated eating fewer calories. And my food tastes better so I'm not constantly looking for something to eat. When I followed WW I spent the day thinking about points and planning my meals. When I add fat I often forget to eat.
1
Go gluten free if you want to lose weight. Wheat is near the top in foods that cause obesity. Gluten free I lost 35 pounds and can eat moderately what I like and not gain back an ounce. Of course, overeating any food causes way more fat people than pointing the finger at specific foods one might eat, and all the talk about specific foods causing fat is a diversion from the real cause.......gluttony.
2
Exercise all you want; you can't outrun the fork.
18
Was it Michael Pollan who said something along the lines of, eat food, Whole Foods, not too much. All these studies are more for scientific curiosity unless you have a genuine metabolic disorder. Come on people. Be moderate, exercise in some way. Get sleep. NOT rocket science.
9
@woodworker2 What a brilliant way to lose weight! And yet, people insist on disregarding and getting fat! And junkies insist on dying! And drunks insist on getting drunk! What can it all mean?
6
@woodworker2, please don't leave out the most important part of the quote. It is: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
11
@Psalm
And avoid "food-like substances" which is what is mostly peddled as food in our supermarkets and fast food restaurants.
4
All the fun ones.
2
Eat and exercise sensibly is still sound advice, whether you're a man or a mouse.
8
Mice don't naturally eat much fat. It makes them sick. Humans don't naturally eat processed carbohydrates. It makes us sick. Conclusion.. Avoid eating a large amount of foods for which you are not evolved and for which your microbiome is not adapted.
11
I smell bacon!
1
Please clarify. First you say “high fat” diet led to weight gain. Then you said that actually, a “really high fat” diet (60% or more) didn’t cause weight gain but a moderate fat diet did.
If a “high fat diet” is 60% fat or more, what is the fat percentage of the moderate fat diet that actually caused weight gain? Cause it may not be that high fat after all.
The whole article and headline seems misleading.
12
Wait! Am I missing something? "Only some of the mice became obese — almost every one of which had been on a high-fat diet." Then "even super-high-fat diets, consisting of more than 60 percent fat, did not lead to significant weight gains"??? So which is it this week Ms. Reynolds? Are we demonizing fat? Sugar? Carbohydrates? Protein?? The coverage of health and nutritional news by the Times has become abysmal. They've always had a tendency to tow the AMA line, but now they seem to be re-writing press releases.
Let's get a few things straight. There's ample evidence and widespread agreement among well informed food scientists that fat does not make you fat. Fat does not trigger an insulin response, and it is insulin that tells your body to store calories as fat. Things that do trigger a significant insulin response are sugar & other simple carbohydrates bread, pasta, potatoes, etc. Snacking is also an obesity driver. The more times per day that you eat, the more times your insulin levels rise, and the more you'll store as fat. This is in any medical textbook on endocrinology. Why doctors tell patients to "exercise & count calories" is a mystery to me. And by the way, exercise has practically no effect on weight loss. That's not to say it has no benefits, but weight loss isn't one of them.
19
@A. T. Cleary ................... Are you saying that if you eat the same amount of food each day, it is more harmful to do it split into four meals than three meals?
@A. T. Cleary
"And by the way, exercise has practically no effect on weight loss"
That has not been my experience. I was 155 pounds 5 years ago when I started running. I made no change to my diet and I run 10-15 miles every week. My weight has been consistently 130-133 lbs. It goes up when I stop running. One month of no running and I am 140. I am a 45 year old male.
2
There are well documented health benefits to cutting down on sugar and simple carbs, which the body processes as sugar. Other than that, the key to losing, or not gaining weight, is simply to burn more calories than you consume. A balanced diet of protein, fats (especially omega 3's), and complex carts, along with regular exercise, will do the trick. It's really not as hard as the diet gurus make it out to be.
11
Whether mouse or human a simple solution emerges: eat a balanced diet.
8
“It looks like consuming high-fat diets, if they aren’t extremely high fat, leads to weight gain, if you are a mouse."
A conclusion which, to me, an ordinary consumer of food, is utterly useless.
13
Calories in vs. calories out. The end.
5
@Josh T
This is a useless tautology which tells us nothing about cause-and-effect. It's like saying "get rich by earning more than you spend."
1
@The Pooch
Exactly.
What you eat needs to be used. "the end."
@Lydia
It's not "the end", because we still have no explanation of cause-and-effect for hunger vs. satiation, never mind metabolic rate, fat storage, and nutritional quality.
What if I told you "every ounce of water consumed needs to be urinated or sweated out. The end." This statement is sort of true, but again tells us nothing about how the body regulates fluid balance and thirst.
1
Mice have very different diets naturally than humans, they eat primarily grains. The results from experiments with mice in terms of obesity have little relevance. If they had a natural diet similar to humans it would be meaningful perhaps..
11
What makes you fat in this country is economic insecurity and work stress. Ever notice there are proportionately fewer fat wealthy people to fat people in lower economic classes? When you have three jobs, when you're eating without paying attention to stay awake, when you're stress eating worried about your economic situation ... you will gain weight and plenty do. The obesity epidemic is at its base the result of a skewed economic system.
43
@Liz Siler Very accurate, also doesn't help that low income areas also are often food deserts with nothing but fast food and barely any grocery stores around.
10
You lost me at "The scientists hope to include female mice in later experiments." We can't catch a break even among our rodent sisters. #notmetoo
26
@Cathy Exactly, that was my thought too. Why is all science male-centric?
1
I have lost weight on law carb diets, on low fat diets, on calories in-calories out diets, and balanced meal diets.
The common denominator in all is the discipline to record all that you eat and make sure you don’t exceed the boundaries of the diet you are on. This particular study seems worthless
6
@Alan N What makes the W.F.P.B. no oil diet so effective is you do not count calories or change portion size. I eat as much as I want until full and maintain my high school weight of 145 at 72 years. Just eat a Whole food no oil plant based diet like Dr John Mcdougall's the starch solution or Dr Caldwell Esselstyn " Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease". Whole grains help maintain the gut microbiome.
1
Simple: The ones you eat too much of.
1
“It looks like consuming high-fat diets, if they aren’t extremely high fat, leads to weight gain, if you are a mouse,”
And that's about it. The idea that sugar isn't the culprit in HUMAN obesity is just silly. The Times is way behind the times in their editorial slant on nutrition, diet, and supplementation.
5
@Vanreuter I tend to think you are right, but I haven't seen the empiric evidence for sugar.
1
So many commenters (and the author and editor, unfortunately) are reading way too much into the study and misleading the readers about the significance of the findings. It looks to be an interesting study that may provide a tiny piece of the puzzle about how body fat is regulated. But you all are pretending that is a prescription for how to eat. It does NOT answer the question about what diet is best to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight in humans...and NYT shouldn't be selling it as such. I expect better.
11
I was interested to read this until I came to the first sentence in paragraph two:
"It is possible, though, to conduct this sort of experiment on mice."
New York Times, you are evolving very slowly.
4
Find and read the book Sugar Blues. Changed my attitude toward sugar forever. I read it when I was 16. I'm 54 now and still manage sugar as if I first read the book. Some would say sugar is poison. If you follow that idea, you'll keep it out of you diet as much as possible and be happier for it.
9
This article was most likely funded by Coke and or Pepsi. I think every healthy person knows its the sugar and carbs along with bad fats like vegetable oil that causes obesity. We have this figured out and don't need more studies. Consider writing an article about the effects of hormones, antibiotics and pesticides in our food and water if you want to be relevant.
14
@Ken Helfer I'm a healthy person and I don't believe that consuming sugar and vegetable oil is the source of obesity. Your comment is just bursting with ignorance (and arrogance). The science is settled, right?
1
@Ken Helfer
Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages has declined dramatically in the last 20 years, while consumption of fat has increased. The common belief that sugar or carbohydrates cause obesity is not correct.
I tried many, many diets and the only diet that worked for me was a high protein/high vegetable diet that also included healthy fats like avocados and nuts. This diet also stressed that you should read the label of every packaged food that you buy, and that was a real eye opener. There is sugar in virtually every packaged food that's on the shelf. I stopped the diet after I lost almost 35 pounds, but I still maintain the basic strictures of the diet, and I only eat sugar when I want dessert, not when I want spaghetti with marinara sauce. So much sugar in canned sauces. Anyway, I have not gained back the weight. I think it's simply incorrect that only fat makes you fat. There are different kinds of fat. Sugar definitely adds weight, at least from my experience. The food industry is making us fat by putting sugar in EVERYTHING.
20
@Joanna Stelling - It’s not the food industry that makes people fat; it’s not having the will power to push one’s self away from the table, and the lack of exercise.
5
@Joanna Stelling Your experience has been my experience. Sugar is a form of poison. Now 85, I lost 25 pounds four years ago by the simple measure of cutting back on sugar consumption. And, the weight loss has been permanent. If only I had learned earlier in life, before pre-diabetes set in.
2
I don't know what the author is suggesting here. That we should be shocked that eating sugar doesn't increase body weight?
I managed to get slim at the age of 20. I lost 50 lbs and my weight got to 103 lbs, and I'm 5'5 tall. It took me just 5 months to achieve this by cutting out sugar and carbs from my diet. I didn't increase my physical activity during that diet. I ate veggies, meat, including sausage, also cheese and eggs, and never went hungry. I don't know how my genes reacted to this diet, but no other diet has ever worked for me quite effectively as that one, and I've tried quite a few since. My weight goes up when I eat sugar--my problem is that I crave sweets. And in the last 3 years I have slowly gained "a few" pounds. So I think I'm going back to my fat and meat and veggie diet. I think it's time to try it again, but in a less aggressive manner. I don't recommend this diet because it might not be good for your health. But for me, since other diets don't work, I'm willing to go for it. I'm also going to add more physical activity. My cholesterol level is fine. But I see a problem on the horizon: I'm 50 right now, and I know that my hormones will affect the diet. We all know that it's more difficult to lose weight at 50 than at 20. By the way, what ages were the mice in these studies? Did they all have the same level of physical activity? Were they slim or fat when they were babies? Did they get their sugar from honey or candy? Sugars differ....
5
@atk You are accidentally but lucky get into Ketogentic Diet. I am on the way to it now and seek its benefits.
Anyway, congrats on your progress of losing weight.
2
@atk I completely agree with you. Proteins/veggies/healthy fat and a few carbs. Get rid of the sugar and you will lose weight. Add it back in as a treat; a special dessert or for a celebration. But it's everywhere on the supermarket shelves and people don't realize how much sugar they're consuming. The body burns sugar first, so if you keep supplying it with sugar, it will never get down to burning the fat.
10
OK, so the reason many researchers now discount mice models is because mice, in almost every way, are not one bit like us. Certainly the science supports the health benefits of a high-fat protein baded diet...but it's just as true that no one diet works for everyone.
3
It should be unlawful and is certainly unethical to subject mice to such an experiment. If the experiment might rid the world of a deadly malady, perhaps such an experiment might be justified. But to force mice to undergo this kind of trivial experimentation, then kill them to dissect their brains to learn more trivia, that is wrong.
PS: if you wish to lose weight, eat healthy foods, mostly plants; put as much on your plate as you plan to eat, but no more; eat slowly and savor your dish, and stop eating when you are 80% full. And, of course, get at least moderate exercise most days of the week, and the more, the better.
Problem solved, and no mice tortured to obtain the result.
17
@Zola
Human obesity is strongly associated with many deadly maladies.
I agree with the general proposition that some types of animal studies are unjustified, but I would not include studies of the effect of diet composition and subsequent brain analysis among them.
2
How do you know when you’re 80% full?
6
@Zola I completely agree with you about the mice. I found that very troublesome. Leave the mice alone. How much research has to be done on dieting? It's been researched to death and we still have an obesity epidemic in the US. Eat fresh food, with no sugar added. Get rid of sugary drinks and emphasize protein/veggies in your diet. It works. Read labels, even of "organic" foods, which really are much better for you, but a lot of them still have added sugar.
6
What would be informative would be how many calories each group consumed. Was it the particular type of food or simply the number of calories consumed?
1
this has always been logical. Fat makes you fat.
Despite the low-carbohydrate cult.
1
@w wittman - Because it carries 2x the calories per gram. Not because it is fat.
2
@w wittman:
Yet dozens of clinical trials, with human subjects, demonstrate better weight loss (improved metabolic health) on high(er) fat, low(er) carb diets. And the low fat diet has _never_ been demonstrated to be useful, healthful, or protective in any clinical trial.
Naturally fatty whole foods are satiating and nutritious. Time to retire the low-fat dogma.
6
@w wittman There are different kinds of fat. Avocados are considered "fat" but so are french fries. Avocados help lower cholesterol and keep your heart healthy. French fries do not, even though they taste delicious. Trans fats, which were invented to increase the shelf life of cookies, etc. do not exist in Nature, only in the lab. But essential fatty acids are good for you and help metabolize certain vitamins. People need fat - the good kind. Good fat helps make your skin more supple, your hair more shiny. Bad fat makes you fat and clogs your arteries.
4
When I first read this, I though "junk science". However, a quick read of the reference study make it clear it's not: the study title is "Dietary Fat....Regulates Energy Intake ... in Mice". Note the "in Mice" bit at the end. No suggestion of any applicability to people. Unlike the article of course, titled "What makes us Fat". Maybe the author doesn't realise there's a difference between us and mice? A classic case of a non-scientist making a leap from what the evidence actually is for a headline grabbing article. It's not quite "fake news", but it's not far off it!
11
@Brendan - Happy to help you, mice are mammals and all mammals have some overlap in many bodily processes. Don't they teach biology in Ireland?
4
@CK I have a feeling that Ireland is far ahead of us in education. I mean, the US is at #28 right now. They do teach biology in Ireland and they also pay their teachers a decent wage.
6
While losing 40 pounds on Weight Watchers I found that whole milk Greek yogurt lasted longer before I became hungry again. I steered clear of the low fat versions because they contained sugar and syrup flavorings. My portions were measured; it worked. Otherwise my diet was high in vegetables and protein....steady as she goes.
23
@mary Did the mice have these choices?
2
@Bill F.
Is this intended as parody?
1
Find out what works for you - I reduced sugar while eating fat and ate vegetables and limited meat at weight came off
9
Too much food makes us fat.
16
"It is neither ethical nor practical to have healthy subjects gorge themselves on one diet for years until they are obese."
"It is possible, though, to conduct this sort of experiment on mice. "
These two statements contradict each other.
16
@Marcus And subject the mice to this experiment, then kill them so their brains and body composition can be studied. Presumably to discover the holy grail that will allow human beings to gorge themselves without gaining weight. Poor mice.
7
@Marcus
Only if one fails to make the obvious inference that the first statement is about human subjects, not mouse subjects.
1
Try the same experiment on mice without taste buds. The compounds that make flavor are fat soluble. Mice that eat high fat diets learn to enjoy eating because their food tastes better.
2
Humans have only 300 more genes than a mouse .
1
@Carlyle T.
And yet look at the power of those 300 genes. One makes a mouse and the other a human. We can get ideas from mouse studies but you have to be very, very cautious with what conclusions you draw.
@Carlyle T.
Presumably 300 very important ones.
1
Eat meat, vegetables, nuts, seeds and oils. Plus exercise.
8
The article itself is very interesting. If you have access to the journal, it's worth reading. The main question it addresses is "what stimulates over-consumption of energy?" They have four fairly simple models (that they recognize as simple and discuss the complicating factors): (1) Protein leverage, (2) energy regulation, (3) a mixed model of protein leverage and energy regulation, (4), hedonic overdrive model. Particularly interesting are their figures showing the regression of gene expression (of key hunger- ad feeding behavior-related genes in the hypothalamaus) against dietary protein and dietary fat contents.
As for who funded the research, The Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Program, the 1000 Talents
program, and Wolfson merit award, National Natural
Science Foundation of China, Guangdong Academy
of Sciences
2
This points to the real problem with nutrition studies, that they come up with intriguing findings then another comes up that contradicts them. An extremely high fat diet may not lead to obesity, for example, but there could be other long term consequences of that kind of diet, including kidney disease and inflammation of blood vessels (I said could be, because the evidence on this is all over the place, too). The reason high fat diets may not lead to obesity is ketosis. Atkins like diets have one problem, that after the initial surge, that often the weight loss tails off and people plateau, and other diets, while they take longer, end up lapping it in terms of weight loss.
Low fat diets also have shown health benefits, as long as it doesn't replace fat with chemicals and sugar or with crap like Olestra and other 'fat substitutes'. Plant based diets have also demonstrated benefits as well, a lower fat plant based diet can lead to a lot of benefits, including weight loss.
In the end a lot of this comes down to finding what works, some people do well on low carb diets, others do well on higher carb/lower fat and protein. Eating a plant based diet that relies on french fries and the like is not going to be healthy, nor is a diet where the person gorges on bacon and uses a ton of heavy creme and the like and eats few vegetables, a lot of this is about proportions and sensibility.
3
@bill d:
Please point out the long-term clinical trial in which other diets "end up lapping [Atkins] in terms of weight loss."
Hint: this study doesn't exist. All clinical trials on diet so far, show that low(er) carb is either beneficial or equally effective as high(er) carb. None show clear long-term benefits for high carb diets.
2
First off rats are not humans. Second of all in humans it’s very difficult to divorce yourself from fats or sugars and carbs completely. When was the last time you had steak without potatoes. Or fries without fat? Or grilled cheese without the cheese or bread?
Dietary studies in humans suffer from the same problem. People can’t recall what they are last night. How do you expect them to produce a detailed account of their meals over 20-30 years as some of these studies purport to study?
2
Utter nonsense, for humans. I happen to be my mouse. I don't do Atkins-type diets for health reasons, but I've tried them (high fat, low carb), and you do lose as much weight as you want. I now do no simple carbs with exercise--completely ignoring fat content (other than staying clear of most fried foods)--and remain healthy and slim. Need a guide? Simply pull up the glycemic index, and eliminate high-glycemic foods. Diets are ridiculous--chose a lifestyle, and I recommend mine.
5
Well, mice and humans are not that different physiologically. So, yes, it is suggestive...and the next step? Find out what makes the fat mice change and recover I guess. Weight watchers for rodents; low fat smoothies and more time on the wheel.
1
No credible explanation for: fat is bad but really high fat is okay. That would be like: smoking a pack a day is bad but if you smoke 3 packs a day you are okay. The extra 2 packs a day repair the damage that the first pack causes? Fat causes more satiety than many carbs so in the real world people might eat fewer calories with a high fat diet but I’m sure the mice had no choice - same calories for all, to stratify correctly. How about full fat milk versus skim milk - shouldn’t there be lots of studies showing the latter is better but recently the converse has been the case. No satiety with skim.
5
@Trevor the cigarette comparison, while tempting is totally incomparable. this is because super high fat diets (not just high fat) sends the body into a state of ketosis. in ketosis the body starts a process whereby it burns fat rather than glucose for energy, hence weight loss. this takes a diet of over 80% calories coming from fat. this super high fat diet also dampens hunger, whereas a high fat diet does not seem to, but can increase hunger.
1
Habitual eating patterns, mostly plant based. avoiding the types of food that make us want to eat more that we should, and combined with an exercise program that also becomes habitual. practiced consistently over two to three years,can get fantastic results. More and more over time we will feel the benefits and they will provide encouragement to keep doing it. It is possible to create these virtuous circles. The only discipline they require are at the start. After the benefits come the motivation will be there to continue. It should be viewed as a long-term remaking of one's self. Not a short-term weight loss plan but a new person who lives life in a different way. You will never want to go back because you will never have felt so good.
6
@Bob I know it's now over 10 years old, but read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan; it gives one a different viewpoint of what one chooses to eat, and I find that, in turn, helps start the virtuous cycle.
This article should be titled "Which Kinds of Foods Make Mice Fat?" Geez.
7
This seems pretty useless, all in all.
6
So many of the comments are about this theory being tested only on mice. I think many people would be surprised at the products being sold, especially of the snake oil type of supplements to help you “live longer” or “think more clearly”, or “heal your guts” that simply have only been tested on rats, or people that look like rats. No that last bit is incorrect, but people are gullible, and love a good testimonial. My granny ate rhubarb every day of her life and lived to be 102. She was mean as a hornet but very old.
4
What a bunch of baloney..
"The results are suggestive!"
This whole article is so full of nonsense. "The subjects were mice, of course, not humans... "
I guess the "data" do "suggest"(!) that we should eat more sugar, as that did not lead to weight gain.??
I'm glad I'm not a mouse! and can still use my brain..
3
Seriously? No female mice when they probably have more trouble losing weight in the first place?
Think, guys, think!
10
"It is neither ethical nor practical to have healthy subjects gorge themselves on one diet for years until they are obese."
Try using college students or those working 3rd shift office work. You'll have a full pool sitting there staring at screens and munching on chips, donuts and diet cokes.
8
I realize that "eat modestly and move your body" neither snags research grant money nor sells product lines, but it seems to me that a lot of us would be a lot better off if we'd stop trying to find a key to the great mystery that isn't a mystery at all: human body weight. We all like to pretend we don't know what a varied, nutritious diet looks like, what portion sizes are, or what constitutes moderate exercise. We're all liars. We lie because we think there's a moral failing in not doing what we know we should do -- and so we pretend we don't know. Our morality gives the impression of remaining intact while our bodies are falling apart. Meanwhile, researchers spin the wheel to find out which will be the next hot macronutrient to overemphasize. "Relatively" high fat, you say? Stay tuned for a revival of both the nonfat nineties and the all bacon grease aughts. Spoiler alert: both will be returned to the "I've tried everything and nothing works" bin, in the end.
16
@MLL It's more of a mystery than you think. Less food and more exercise may work for some, but not all and perhaps not even many. Believing it does is just another way to judge people, because something works for everyone, right?
2
@MLL
The problem is that we now have many competing definitions about what is or isn't a nutritious, healthful diet. I can forgive people for being confused.
Which kibble should I buy for myself when I head for the local supermarket? Is the saturated fat in my coconut oil "bad" in the same way that the saturated fat on my bacon is "bad" and what makes you think it might be bad, anyway? This article is of no practical value even if I had pet mice to feed... Is the actual research report any more enlightening? https://smile.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Science/dp/1400...
11
It is absurd to post an article that speaks nothing to humans and is all about what makes mice fat. Please be clearer in your titles. Certainly mice have a different compositional makeup/metabolism than humans??? This study seems so irrelevant to the human condition and I want my ten minutes back!
7
See the works, website, and recommended diet of John McDougall, M.D: "The fat you eat is the fat you wear." Not to mention the other health problems it causes. Advising thus for 40 years.
3
Goodness gracious.
Whatever happened to the truism: too many calories and too little burning of those calories leads to fat accumulation.
And then, how about the structure of those calories? Fat supports sebaceous glands. Protein is the building block of the body. High-density carbohydrates keep one filling full longer, and eating less. Low-density carbohydrates (specifically in this case, sugar) cause the pancreas to release insulin which stores these as fat.
But in America, farm states have a stranglehold on the federal budget, subsidizing corn-syrup, sugar, and flour that end up in our manufactured "food"-products that taste just so good.
We are the only country in the world with socialized diabetes.
But hey, who cares? "The Bachelor" is on tonight. Afterwards, to the Dairy Queen for a blowout.
35
@Padonna Sometimes beloved truisms aren't true. Read Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. https://smile.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Science/dp/1400...
4
@spehnec
In my and other opinions on this very good science site, Gary Taubes doesn’t quite understand the research.
“He thinks it justifies removing added sugars and processed foods from our diet. In my opinion, he goes too far. He commits the same sin he accused the low-fat diet advocates of: going beyond the evidence and recommending society-wide changes based on inadequate data.”
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/gary-taubes-and-the-case-against-sugar/
1
@Padonna
CICO is a tautology. It's true in an obvious sense, like "a room becomes full when more people enter than leave." But it does nothing to explain _why_ people are overeating.
If CICO is a "truism" for fat loss, then what you wrote about fat vs. protein vs. sugar is irrelevant. If different nutrients feed back on metabolism, satiety, and fat storage, then we have already moved past a simple CICO system.
For the love of God GIVE US A PILL! With all the ultra-sophisticated technology around I cannot believe that Science can’t concoct a pill that will just stop digestion Or, by some other mechanism make it possible to lose weight.
IMHO it’s just plain moralism at work, punishing fat people, requiring repentence and amendment of life: ‘eating healthy’ and exercising. Well guess what: I do that. And it doesn’t work. So do a lot of us. So stop moralizing and give us a pill.
6
@Harriet Baber
There may not be a pill but there is an injection. It's called Byetta, it slows digestion and makes you feel full.
It helped me get my A1C down to 6.5 and lose 25 lbs.
1
@Harriet Baber
Likely if they developed such a pill, it would have major side effects and not do what you want. Anyone remember OIestra, the fat substitute that made potato chips yummy but caused other problems? Or snackwell cookies, no fat but loaded with sugar?
Part of the problem is what is healthy eating? One of the problems is that people often eat food they think is healthy (low fat packaged food) that isn't so healthy, but think it is. The other problem is what is healthy to one person isn't for another, universal guidelines stink for that reason.
The other thing is a lot of diet plans forget food is not just fuel, and they tell you to eat food that is unappetizing, with the old puritan you have to suffer, and that is a disaster, too. Food is a lot more than fuel, and that should be recognized (on the other hand, the Atkins glom all the meat you want, cream, etc has its own problems if followed like that).
I can only speak for my own experience, but a low fat plant based food plan has worked for me, I am down to a weight I haven't been at since 18, and other things show well. One of the reasons is that sites like fork over knives and Protection diet, have fantastic recipes that are plant based, and also are lower or no fat (they are pay sites, but have information for free, too). Not claiming a miracle, only that it has worked and we have been doing it for almost 2 years now; precision nutrition is also a pay site but that has good free content.
2
How many times the real cause has to be posted: too much food makes people fat. It doesn't matter if the calories come from fat, sugar or protein. Simple. The amount matters. Thank you.
20
@Mari You're welcome.
1
@Mari
Yes and no. Yes, calorie limiting, keeping calories expended > than calories taken in, will cause you to lose weight (a deficit of 3500 calories is 1 pound lost). The problem is that assumes that what you eat is all the same, or that you can gorge on a fast food diet and exercise it away, and that isn't true. Counting calories works for weight loss, but long term is no way to live, it is why most 'diets' fail. Also, with sugar (talking added sugar, hfc from soda) it isn't all the same, eating a piece of fruit is not the same as drinking a can of coke, even though the calories are equal, coke causes an insulin reaction that drives fat production.
Yes, a calorie from fat is the same as a calorie from a carb, but fat is almost twice as much calorie dense, and that matters. If you eat 4 oz of a carb like vegetables, it will have half the calories roughly of something fatty, which means calorically to have the same effect, you would need to eat half as much of the fatty food. More importantly, as the packaged food industry knows, some foods are such (sugar like HFC is one of them) that in eating them, they cause you to eat more overall. Someone who eats 4oz of lean meat and a big salad is likely to feel full; someone eating a 4oz portion of a packaged meal with meat and vegetables is going to eat a lot more, feel more hungry. What you eat matters, and while a calorie is a calorie, the amount you eat often depends on what you are eating, and that is a fact as well.
4
@Mari
In my experience, the composition of one’s diet, not just the total number of daily calories, does matter in achieving and maintaining satisfactory satiation levels between meals. In my experience, when I am hungry between meals, I am more likely to engage in bad eating habits. Avoiding most simple carbs and increasing healthy fats and lean proteins has helped me to avoid hunger even as I work to maintain a healthy weight despite midlife metabolic changes.
2
“It looks like consuming high-fat diets, if they aren’t extremely high fat, leads to weight gain, if you are a mouse,” says John Speakman, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, who oversaw the study ".
As per above, the results apply to mice, not humans.
5
@DJS That first statement was a bit of a head banger.
1
@Paul It did make me laugh out loud and go straight to the comments to see who else picked up on it.
1
@DJS Male mice, at that. They hope to work with female mice soon. I hope they can find some. Apparently females are pretty exotic and rare, hence not worth too much trouble doing this kind of research on.
1
Please! Be scientific. I realize that you, the NYTimes, places Politics above scientific accuracy, and absolutely loves fake news and fake "interest items", like this one. But ...
If you were scientific, the headline would have been
"Which Kinds of Foods Make Male Mice Fat?"
This article says nothing about people.
10
Interesting, another bad explained experiment with mice trying to sell a biased conclusion. They should give some guns to those mice to see what happens, we may finally prove that guns don't have anything to do with us behaving like rats.
4
So now it's fat that leads to weight gain. Last month it was sugar. Why publish these articles? Nutritionists obviously don't know what they're talking about, so why confuse the public with their claims?
12
@Forrest Chisman My takeaway from 20 years of scientific study is that eating makes you fat, sick, obese, malnourished, over-nourished, promotes serious organ and coronary diseases, or cancer. Let's stop eating, shall we?
3
Fat schmat. Thin schmin. It ain’t like they found a way to thwart Death.
12
@Fiona
Doesn’t it make sense to maximize the experience of life while one is living? Including by maintaining a healthy weight that feels good to you? I’m not ready to jump into a whole just yet even if that is where I will ultimately end up.
Who, or what conglomerate, paid for this study?
13
“It looks like consuming high-fat diets, if they aren’t extremely high fat, leads to weight gain, if you are a mouse,”
And if you're not a mouse...?
9
This is about as unprofessional an article as I've seen in this section...
High fat doesn't describe a diet precisely enough. There are medically-necessary high fat diets, namely the Ketogenic and modified Atkins diets, which require eating very precise ratios of fat, protein, and carbohydrates.
Merely saying that the mice were fed x-amount of fat and saying nothing about what else they were fed and at what ratios is completely meaningless. If a meal included 15g of fat with 60g of carbohydrate and 8g of protein, then it is no wonder those mice gained a lot of weight, even if they were able to freely exercise.
Maintaining ketosis entails taking in high amounts of fat and protein with small enough amounts of carbohydrates so that the fat gets burned.
This is really bad reporting.
---
www.rimaregas.com
37
I'd love to see an experiment on rats fed GMO feed vs Organic feed and the incidence of obesity. Oh wait! It's already been done in Norway. https://www.gmoevidence.com/norway-veterinary-science-college-gm-corn-le...
1
@Ravenna You cite a source that carries a grudge, has no real evidence shown, and comes with zero comments since it was posted in 2012?
1
@Ravenna I found your comment interesting. I looked up Ashild Krogdahl, the scientist your site claims as a source for their article (via ResearchGate). Her work is extensive but her CV does not list any studies on GMO's or Organic food. If she did publish an influential study on the topic, like any professional scholar, she would likely add it to CV. She works primarily on Sea Bass and Atlantic Salmon. So giving you the benefit of the doubt that you did not know this, perhaps you should distrust the site "GMOevidence" as a valid source for this kind of information. Their ardor seems to outpace their rigor.
2
I remember watching Mighty Mouse when I was a child. He could fly. I wonder if he had hollow bones like a bird? Unlike Popeye, it never showed Mighty Mouse eating anything.
5
Just anecdotal observation, so no science involved.
Check out the size of people with junk food and cola in their carts, then those with beans and carrots etc. You really don't need mice.
32
@John F I agree!
2
@John F not true. come to India. No junk food and cola. Lots of beans, rice, veggies.. Diabetes epidemic. Not many obese people. It's complicated. Messed up metabolism.
2
@Devi
Indian cuisines are among the most caloric in the world. I love Indian food, but I rarely cook it or go out to eat it because it is so (deliciously) heavy. Lentils, spinach and cauliflower are not light foods when they are drowned in ghee.
1
I am still in the camp of lack of movement coupled with a diet high in fats and carbs are the leading causes of obesity in humans. While this male rat study gives one pause for thought, humans are more sedentary these days. As a physician, I treat some of the fattest people in my state. They don't move, they can't move (walking is painful), and they overeat high fat, high carbohydrate foods. The more fat they eat, the more fat they crave because fat does stay in the stomach longer and takes longer to digest. Additionally, many people don't eat just for energy but for comfort and stress-reduction which is not what food is intended to relieve. I believe obesity with all of its comorbidities will continue to kill our population along with the opioids.
17
@njbmd
Good letter, Good viewpoint, Good grief !!
You are very likely correct RE the evil of "lack of movement coupled with high fat high carbs diet".
2
@njbmd
While you are right about people being overweight, you also display a lot of the problems with nutrition among the medical profession, ie doctors are not often the most well informed people out there, medical school training is a joke, and a lot of it is the old "eat less, move more, and you will be fine", which also implies being overweight is a moral failing...not entirely blaming doctors, because everyone is confused.My cardiologist told me to eat low fat diet several years ago, then told me if time was a problem, eat low fat prepared meals..ever see what was in them? Couple of points:
1)There is nothing wrong with food as comfort food, or the idea of it. Food is not just fuel, it isn't gasoline, there are a lot of things around it. That said, gorging on fast food or french fries or a cake loaded with sugar and fat is not healthy...but eating celery sticks and brown rice by itself and other food promoted is not sustainable.
2)The idea that exercise is a big factor with weight loss and health isn't true either. 90% of healthy eating and living is in nutrition, the other 10% is in exercise.
3)Carbs are not bad, it is carbs that emphasize empty carbs that are the problem. Asian diets and mediterranean diets, for example, use white rice and things like white pasta, yet people eating them are healthy....because they also don't eat processed food, they aren't eating processed sugar or something loaded with chemicals to make you hungry.
1
@njbmd
I spend a lot of time visiting relatives in Ohio during my childhood (in the 1960s and early 1970s). I didn’t go back after that until I attended a funeral there last year. It was a shocker. Whatever happened to make so many of the people of Ohio so obese? It wasn’t like that when I was a kid.
1
It would be helpful if the authors of this study defined the terms used. What, for example, defines a "high fat" diet versus a "very high fat" diet. Citing examples with food choices that humans actually eat would be relevant in interpreting this information. Specifically, how much butter, fat or oils consumed on a daily basis defines a low, moderate or high fat diet, respectively. Without that information, how can a person interpret the information presented so as to possibly apply the results of this study to his or her own life. The researchers need to translate the diets fed to the mice into comparable human diets. A sample of each type of diet in terms of a typical meal consumed by humans would be valuable
15
@Lois Brenneman And don't be tricked into thinking that eliminated fats is the way to good health. That's just nonsense as shown by real humans living in societies for many generations.
2
@Lois Brenneman - and they didn’t define the fats: saturated, unsaturated, animal, non-animal. The type of fat matters too.
2
These types of studies invariably feed the mice inflammatory rancid vegetable oil (bad omega 6 fatty acids) for the fat content thereby invalidating the results. My own experience has been with a high fat ketogenic diet, and have lost 50 pounds along with my pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high triglycerides. Exactly the opposite of what the study claims.
10
@Matt My guess is it was funded by the sugar industry. These fact-free announcements of some experiment that's not been reproduced or peer reviewed, and only tells you what happens to rodents, not humans.
6
A mouse, born when an Apple falls of a tree, can have baby mice before that Apple rots. That Apple must be stored thoughtfully for a human baby born the same day too have a chance of eating it. Evolution gave mice and humans very different metabolism for very different lifespans.
10
@John
Great point.
This article is very unclear. Should we eat mice or apples?
3
The study is useful, it seems to me, only inasmuch as it illustrates that fat creation is not simply the result of calories, but the kind of calories provided. Beyond that it's meaningless. A similar study in humans would surely show a similar point, namely that it's not just calories, but the source of calories that make us fat.
2
@ACT - well said.
“It looks like consuming high-fat diets, if they aren’t extremely high fat, leads to weight gain, if you are a mouse,”
Check please!
10
@W Saint if you are a MALE mouse.
7
The experiment is interesting, but I'm not sure how much application it has to humans. Because when you let humans eat and exercise as much as they want...it isn't just the ones eating high fat diets that get fat. So we are obviously not like mice in this basic way. Roughly 60% of the population appears unable to regulate its caloric intake in such a way to avoid serious weight issues, regardless of diet.
Given that we don't resemble the test mice in this basic way, I don't see much reason to think that the diets that result in fat mice left to their own devices are going to be the same as the ones that result in fat humans left to their own devices.
9
Mice reproduce and grow much faster than other animals. As you can see from this study they will eat just about anything. There coats can be used to make very comfortable clothing. The fat ones have larger coats, if you were wondering. They produce virtually no Methane gas compared to larger edible animals. At first I thought this study might not really have proven anything, but then I realized the deeper meaning. Bon appetit.
4
Stop torturing mice. Just go plant-based. Read the China Study.
14
@Jane Velez-Mitchell The study that said dairy kills despite the fact that humans have been eating dairy without issue forever.
1
@Jane Velez-Mitchell Well, you have to be more specific. India is primarily vegetarian. Epidemic of diabetes. Plant-based vegetarian people, lots of them, very sick.
4
@Jane Velez-Mitchell
I have read in a number of seemingly reliable source is tha The China Study has been debunked. Although perhaps by now the debunking itself has been debunked
1
Gaining weight is mostly about taking on board more calories than the brain, metabolism and level of exercise can use. Taking on more calories is mostly about eating too much and less about what is actually eaten. Where the food type most obviously comes into play is foods that are easy to eat and are pleasing (with respect to mouth feel and taste) will be eaten to excess if they are available. We all know this: try eating one or two Pringles chips or one chocolate out of the box or a single French fry. The combinations of sugar and fat or salt and fat (pizza, chocolates, ice cream, most desserts) are particularly pleasing, and the foods made from them are easy to eat. No mystery, really. People eat too much sugar, fat and refined carbs because they are cheap, accessible, easy to eat and tasty. Hence they get fat. We won't see this in mice because they are mice, not people. Obesity is socially patterned in human populations because richer, more educated people have greater internal and external regulation of their eating behaviour and greater capacity to defer gratification than poorer, less well supported people. And what's acceptable from a behavioural and appearance perspective depends on the group to which we belong. Hence upper class women are rarely fat and lower class men frequently are due to social regulation/social pressure. Not that complicated, really. We don't need to monkey with mice.
11
@Cephalus your suggestion about "richer, poorer" makes me uncomfortable. "Greater internal & external regulation"...yadayadayada....have you been to an area of low income folk? Have you been to an area where grocery stores are few & far between & most probably people might not have transportation to those stores, far away? The only stores nearby are poorly stocked corner stores...not a lot of fresh vegetables & what's cheaper then soda, candy & Pringles. Check it out for yourself. Take a bus cross town from where YOU live. Are things different in Canada then in the US?
Here's the way I understand it, which is probably wrong but might as well throw in my two cents. The human body is programmed to be prepared for starvation or low availability of food during certain times. What is stored is generally stored as fat. Thus, if there is no fat in my diet, the body triggers to store what comes in, sugars etc., by turning it into fat. If there is fat (healthy fat hopefully) regularly in the diet, the body doesn't move so easily into storing it by turning sugars, etc. into fat. I have a lot of questions about it but generally speaking, it seems to work for me. What I don't know is how dark fat, the stuff that seems to have some sort of relationship to preservatives and other junk put into foods, contributes to the picture. I have found that making sure there is some fat in my diet without a lot of sugars or refined carbs seems to support weight stability and even some loss. Just throwing this in, no mouse studies that I know of.
12
What about collecting anecdotal evidence on a large scale and analysing it? It seems to me that a mass collection of anecdotal evidence could also result in some valid conclusions about weight gain / loss. Why is the go-to scientific method limited to experimental design in the case of human behaviour and its outcomes.
Here is one observation I have made - populations who get their carbohydrates from rice are generally slimmer than populations who get their carbohydrates from wheat.
3
@JJ Because it is harder to sort out causation and correlation.
For example, is there a correlation between average income level and cultures in which rice is predominant over wheat?
4
takeaway: they didn't learn much that's replicable for humans, didn't even learn much about mice, but they sure killed a lot of mice! they really had to look at their brains -- oh right, it showed some increase in their happiness, that was apparently unable to be discerned thru behavior alone, hmm. studies like this give "scientific" studies deservedly bad press
6
Good to know.
I assume you are a research biologist who has done studies similar to this and understands the details about the way they were performed. Perhaps you could post a link to the paper they wrote? It would be interesting to see how easily it can be debunked.
1
@LJ
They didn’t really just look at their brains. The brains were examined for “evidence of altered genetic activity”, meaning that the mRNA was extracted and measured for gene profiling.
The types of fat, sugar, and grain carbohydrates make a different. Generally a balanced diet is what you want and that means vegetables, fruit, lean protein and whole grains. You don't want high cholesterol foods or lots of saturated fat. Avoid lots of refined sugar and white flour. Also, whole foods are best. Many chemicals used specifically as preservatives kill your gut cultures. Additionally, you don't need as much grains as the food pyramid suggests.
On a side note, people should stop obsessing about their appearance. Health is what you want, not to emulate a bunch of vacuous celebrities. By the way, their are no celebrities who are not vacuous.
1
Gretchen does good reporting. My fave was her championing "vigorous" exercize vs the slow plodding type. At 80 it pleases me to enjoy the occasional 200 yard sprint. Keeps one prepared to run for a bus...so to speak.
9
I fed my hedgehog a strict keto diet. Within three months, Hermy grew to the size of puma and could outrun a deer hound. We need to be careful with experimentation lest we create a creature we cannot control.
Gotta go, he is breaking into my car.
23
Hermy could outrun a deer hound... in a stolen car.
Not exactly a level playing field.
2
Anyone complaining about the NYT translation of a scientific study should just read the work themselves. The NYT thoughtfully included a link to the original study. I like that the NYT makes access to studies like this with an easy to understand summary. Go read the scientific paper and bring your comments back here if you think it's been poorly reported.
8
@Charlie Best Reuben sand ever was in Truckee. You are one lucky guy:)
4
The take away? Forget about taxing sugary drinks. It was a foolish idea that would punish people less able to afford it. Why is obesity prevalent? Could it have anything to do with eating fast food and processed food? Of course it does and inner city neighborhoods are famous for clusters of such foods and little healthy ones. The term is food deserts where fruits and fresh vegetables are rare and organic is non-existent.
We cannot address the issue because Big Agra owns Congress. They don't want us to research this any more than Shell wants us to research climate change or the NRA wants us to research gun deaths. All three are killing us and our present Congress is happy to go along with it as long as the lobbyists keep their campaign coffers filled and write their bills for them. How corrupt it that?
Oh, and lets give a big hand to their enablers: the supreme court without whose decision to allow unlimited campaign spending by your best friend next door, Mr. Corporation, this might not have been possible. Ah, the heady smell of make self-dealing!
In two weeks we can start to push back. Vote Democratic.
27
OMG. These mice studies can be useful but only if you understand the composition of the chow they are eating. When I was in a lab both high-fat and high-protein chow were primarily carbs and the fats were usually PUFA (very bad for human livers, often leading to fatty liver disease). When you combine bad carbs and bad fats you get fat mice and fat humans. Quality fats consumed in the absence of carbs allow many humans to maintain a healthy weight.
It may be that the composition of chow fed in labs has changed over the years and my doubts can be answered. If so, please define the terms: what are percentages of macronutrients in the chow and what are their sources? Otherwise this is meaningless.
Please quit publishing the same rote "analysis" of inadequate and bad data. Read and learn from the comments made to previous stories.
7
Waste of time if they didn't investigate the smoking gun: high-fructose corn syrup, America's favorite sweetener since 1980.
15
I understand that we share a great amount of DNA with mice and bananas. That doesn't make us mice or bananas. But let's not argue DNS. Let's instead consided ethnicity.
While it is true that our far distant ancestors move further and further away from where their ancestors began, our distant ancestors seldom moved outside of the initial group line that began the traveling wanderlust. This is why, today, we can visually see ethnicity in people of different bone structures, hair texture, skin color, and inherited diseases. That's why I discount this 'study'. Unless they are testing both male and female mice and all those mice come from different subspecies around the world, they didn't learn much. They asked a question based on a suspicion they had and then set out to prove it true. That is why the study is limited.
For example, my husband and I share the same exact diet, except I drink more alcohol. He is the one who has Type 2 Diabetes. I have osteoporosis. I changed our diet when he came home with the diagnosis of T2D. We have managed to keep his blood sugars down to 105- 110 for weeks, until he had to have bread, rice, and pasta. Meanwhile, I still have osteoporosis. His diet consists of meats, fats, some veggies for KMg. I strive to be sure that the carbohydrate is kept low. If he can just learn not to indulge in carbs he may just live a long life.
10
...so sugar didn't make the mice fat. only high-fat foods made the mice fat. But a very high-fat diet did not make the mice fat. So what are New York Times readers - whom are exclusively humans - supposed to learn form this. Don't worry about sugar, and if you are going to eat high-fat foods, go extremely high-fat?
14
@Scott Goldstein
And is it extremely high fat with no protein? With high protein? What is the source of this extremely high fat? Did the extremely high fat mice also eat no sugar? Lots of sugar? What were the levers?
In real life, on humans, especially this human, sugar is a major culprit. It's like a drug. Other nutrients don't seem to matter when sugar is involved.
(Moral of the story: avoid added sugars as best as possible.)
3
The article doesn’t differentiate between good and bad fats.
10
@Stefanchikm
And the high-fat rat chow used in these experiments is notorious for using industrial seed oils high in Omega-6 fatty acids that no one in the LCHF community recommends.
3
Sorry, but mice and humans don't share the same physiology when it comes to nutrition and obesity. Though it is anecdotal, my own success with losing weight and reversing my diabetic condition with a low carb high fat diet is more proof than this article. At least for me. Getting off the train of avoiding fats and eating mostly carbs has changed my life dramatically for the better over the last few years.
Can't say enough good things about Dr. Jason Fung and his fight against the Standard American Diet and the American Diabetes Association standards
8
@Charlie
While I am happy for you, one case of anything only determines the outcome for that one case. It cannot be generalized to others. You could be an outlier for reasons unknown to you.
2
If you eat more calories than you burn in a given day, you will gain weight. If you eat less, you will lose weight.
There is no magic bullet to this formula, much as we would love to think there is.
14
@Len
You mean the laws of thermodynamics can't be violated?
3
@Len actually, your liver will pass fats when they are to high and metabolism change hugely. People are a little more compote than your high school physics model.
2
@Len
This is true but it is a tautology. It does nothing to explain _why_ a person is overeating (or underdeating) relative to their metabolic needs.
It also tells us nothing about the physiology of appetite, fat storage, blood sugar balance, etc, all of which have complex feedbacks from both types and amounts of foods consumed.
How absurd is it to look at what mice do with food, people are completely different. It is very rarely the fault of the food in particular it is the reasons we eat, the reasons we crave. If it was only biological need for fuel we would all be at a healthy weight. We live in a world full of sights and smells of the most wonderful, horrible, food imaginable. And it is always front and center everywhere we go.
1
Why did America become obese in the midst of low-fat efforts in the 80s and 90s?
14
@Christopher
Because it was an experiment based on assumptions and not data. There is enough data available now to disprove those assumptions. Looking back at those 'studies' we are now often able to see that the answer was assumed before the question was asked and long before the parameters of the study were dictated. That's not a study, in my book anyway. That' a resolution to prove the answer to the question that assumes there is an single simple identifying answer.
5
@Christopher
Perhaps that's when GMO food started entering the American food stream.
1
Do we know who funded the study?
13
@Alan i was thinking the same thing.
2
@Alan
Read the study to find out. You may find a lot of interesting other things as well.
1
Wise person say: "Better to eat like bird, not like lab mouse."
10
Who paid for the study?
10
Are you a man or a mouse? I would say this article is suggestive of nothing if you are the former.
3
For six weeks, I ate mostly animal products (high fat) with a very small amounts of non-starchy vegetables. Approximately 60% of my calories came from fat, mostly 80/20 ground beef chuck from pastured cows. Before I started, I got my A1c and cholesterol measured. I also needed to drop about 30 pounds.
I was pre-diabetic when I started.
After six weeks, I remeasured my A1c and cholesterol. I'm no longer prediabetic, my ldl dropped by half, my triglycerides dropped by half, my hdl stayed steady in the normal range. I also lost 8 pounds. Oh, and I had a decrease in joint pain. These days, I can even run a little.
Maybe I missed the evolutionary boat.
33
From a very personal point of view: I can go on eating chocolate, but I should no longer eat bacon (not even twice a week, as a special week-end treat -- yes, one package does not last long).
2
The article seems to contradict itself, "Only some of the mice became obese — almost every one of which had been on a high-fat diet... None of the other diets, including those rich in sugar, led to significant weight gain or changed gene expression in the same way. Even super-high-fat diets, consisting of more than 60 percent fat, did not lead to significant weight gains, and the mice on those diets consumed less food over all than their counterparts, presumably because they simply could not stomach so much fat." I guess the difference here is between a high-fat and super-high fat diet.
Eat protein and enough carbs to be fit and active - find your passion and/or create a physical habit. This is the best "diet".
9
When I eat carbs, I gain weight. When I eat normal amounts of fat and protein I do not gain weight. I work out, very intensively, several hours a week.
I do not eat sugary foods or refined carbs, ever. I do not eat artificial sweeteners. I eat fish, fowl and some red meat. If I eat a pound of bread, I gain 2 lbs. Obviously some must be water but is a very fatty water!
It takes much more energy to digest protein than to digest carbs (or fat). But carbs go in and insulin turns them into fat (actually glycogen) very quickly. Then you're hungry again. Quickly. Fat remains in the stomach a long time and .. I am not hungry for hours.
I ate a whole, sweet (!) melon last night. In the morning, I was 3 lbs heavier than yesterday. Last night, I exercised till I dropped. Even so.
It might be time to note that while mice are good stand-ins for many aspects of human biochemistry - they might not be good in this aspect. Male mice of course.
Obviously there is no connection between female and male mice aside from the coincidental.
13
I am a mouse and would like to add my two cents. I like cheese. Cheese has fat. If I eat too much, I notice I gain weight. I also notice I gain weight when I eat too much of anything though. Also, I gain weight when I can’t run around the maze, my wheel, or if I’m lucky, the house.
70
@Jon You need a cat (feline) in the house. Then you will get more exercise. I have a cat and a dog and I don't have a weight problem, no time for it.
4
Why are people always trying to find the holy grail of eating and not going up in weight? There is not such thing. Eating any kind of natural food -processed food is not food, it is something else closer to a chemical cocktail- with moderation and physical excercise is the secret.
9
This article is very misleading. This 'eat fat and you'll be fat' motto is totally false. I'd suggest that people read Always Hungry?, by David Ludwig. A truly eye opener, esp. for those trying to fine tune the type of food they intake.
Bottom line:
- Calories don't tell the whole story (in fact, they may not count at all); experiments show that people on a high carb diet lose less weight than those on a high fat diet (with the same amount of calories in either case)
- Cut on highly processed carbs; they are stored as fat (since taken from your blood stream, you get hungry...)
- Feed on good fats (olive oil, nuts, fluxseed, cheese, whole milk, whole yougurt, etc.); your body will start putting back on your bloodstream the fat you accumulated (i.e., you loose weight) and you feel less need to eat. (I'm vegetarian so I use plant protein and fiber as well)
- Yes, you can eat chocolate (70%+)
- Don't leave the table hungry but do not overload either.
- No diet to follow. Just change what you input to healthy stuff.
- Do some moderate physical activity.
Important: Be happy. Life is too short. ;-)
41
@Antonio Marion. Dr. Ludwig's book changed my life "Aways Hungry" - an eye-opening experience - it made so much sense and after more than 2 years, has become a way to live out the rest of my years (I am now 70 years old, had and have no significant health issues, except for arthritis - which lessened after going through the "food boot camp" suggested in "Always Hungry" and losing 18 pounds, continuing my water aerobics classes and indoor track walking and while I do not consider myself on a "diet", I frequently reread "Always Hungry"), main thing is - I learned on what my body and gut functions best - the right kind of fat, protein, and some plant-based and not processed carbs - in that order. Finally, as caregiver to both my parents (yes, they are still with us), I apply some of the "Always Hungry" principles to their eating, when I can.
@Antonio Mario "experiments show that people on a high carb diet lose less weight than those on a high fat diet (with the same amount of calories in either case)"
I would love to see this study, as it would debunk fundamental laws of thermodynamics and thus be a monumental discovery.
1
@Jon
It doesn't debunk thermodynamics if metabolic rate varies (which it does).
This article does quite a poor job in educating people.
To claim that sugar and/or processed carbs do not make people fat, or that they do not represent a poor diet is quite a disservice.
We should all eat good fat (nuts, olive oil, cheese, etc.), in addition to protein and fiber; unprocessed carbs, as in fruits, are fine. But we should NOT eat processed carbs (like common sugar); we are programmed to store carbs in the form of fat, whether we like it or not.
Taking the article at face value, one finds that drinking sugary soda, for instance, would do no harm. Pathetic.
25
"For a diet study published this summer in Cell Metabolism, researchers randomly assigned one of 29 different diets to hundreds of adult male mice. (The scientists hope to include female mice in later experiments.)"
Gee, thanks for the after-thought.
14
@Kate right? If the NIH had funded this they would have required both male and female mice because--they are different!
3
"When fat energy content was 60%, body weight and adiposity both increased as protein content increased." Taken from an analysis of the study by the UK National Health Service.
https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/proof-its-fats-not-carbs-that-caus...
If the content of my diet consisted of 60% fat, well...
1
Is it possible that the mice (being mice) could not stop eating the high fat stuff (whatever it was)? We know high fat is tastier. What percentage of body weight did the different mice consume? Perhaps a mouse eating the equivalent of its body weight a day does not translate very well to humans ....
1
Only MALE mice were used. Then the results get extrapolated to mice and then to humans. "The scientists hope to include female mice in future experiments." Why aren't females included and why don't scientists think eliminating half the species isn't too significant a limitation to compromise the utility of the results?
24
@Michele S. You are absolutely correct. The article should specify the gender....What makes male mice fat. We should also ask out physicians who compare our cholesterol "numbers" with the "male scale"....about how many women were in the cholesterol studies in the US.....I am not a man. I do not want to be a man. I don't want my physiology to be compared with that of a man. ...We may, infact, be separate species?
6
The diet advice I’ve found most useful is: A calorie is a calorie, no matter its source. To lose weight, eat fewer calories per day than you expend.
7
@Sue
Digesting 100 calories of fat uses 7 calories.
Digesting 100 calories of protein requires 30 calories.
Certainly an individual calorie is the same amount of energy regardless of how it is used. BUT - fat is not protein. There is no reason to assume that the body uses the same number of calories no matter what it digests! It doesn't.
Similarly, when a body goes keto - some of the biochemistry changes. Sort of like changing the gasoline your car "eats" into diesel. Why do you think that it would get the same MPG?
5
actually, the "calorie is a calorie" myth has been disproven repeatedly in recent years.
7
I remember when food manufacturers started marketing low fat snack foods. It was in the late 70's early 80's. One would think that people eating these foods would have lost weight but the opposite happened. To make up for the lack of fat, they added sugar.
Fats are dense. People like me who can not eat a large meal, benefit from higher fat/lower carb meals. By adding fat to salads and vegetables, I find I do not get the carb cravings that people complain about when dieting.
People who can eat large meals might want to be careful of adding too much fat. Fats do add calories.
People need to use common sense and know their own bodies.
13
I wonder what the stress of running from a cat does in terms of weight gain:->
7
The most instructive thing in this article is the lack of acknowledgement that mice are very poor models of human dietary needs. So poor that the results are meaningless.
16
@Liz the results are probably very meaningful to the mice! ;)
I agree with your comment.
2
Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
- Michael Pollan
15
Who decided to use “Beware of High Fat Diets”. High fat diets are helping people! Please NYTimes get with the program and change your info to “Beware of High Sugar Diets”. Many many people here have documented the good changes in their blood numbers and weight utilizing high fat, low low sugar diets.
15
First we are talking about mice. Second, the fact that extremely high fat diets didn't lead to weight gain as much as reasonably? high fat diets demonstrates that the relationship is not a simple linear relationship, more fat, more weight. And it was not literally the fat itself but the effect of the fat on eating behavior that accounted for the weight gain. Conclusion: Extrapolating any of this information to humans is tenuous at best.
16
@J.I.M. I read here that a lot of test rats were repelled by an extremely high fat diet. I dont understand your point.
1
the point is: the mice were not restricted to eating fixed portion sizes. the "sorta high fat" diet could've been the tastiest (this would definitely be the case for human foods), so those mice could've eaten 10 times as much food, therefore, it would be no surprise that they gained a lot of weight. the study authors never clarified if they controlled for portion size.
2
No matter how much “research” is completed there is no health justification for the continued marketing and mass producing of processed food and drinks with overwhelming amounts of sugar and high fructose corn syrup and fats.
On the contrary their is much evidence in support of discontinuing the unhealthy food industrial complex that is enriching and enriching and enriching corporations while making the less fortunate very fat and very unhealthy.
We need to eat like the hunters and gatherers our bodies expect us to be. Legumes and grains, nuts, fruit/vegetables/complex carbohydrates,up to two eggs per day, lean meats, low and non fat dairy and lots of water to drink.
5
@Sally You almost got it right... Eat FULL-fat dairy.
It's an interesting mechanism your body goes through, but eating whole milk or dairy, NOT low fat, makes you healthier and lose weight.
Also, cut off meat completely. You'll be helping the planet and yourself.
4
OMG! I had a thought. Could it be that over eating makes us fat?
12
"It LOOKS LIKE ....IF you are a mice...". Sigh. Does this pass as credible scientific evidence in today's day and age?
10
Mice are not evolved to eat the same types of food we are. Maybe a black bear model would be ... no ... they are programmed to get fat.
Mice are not men.
10
@Mark NOVAK
Are you saying men cannot be mice? Well, I can speak to that!
3
To avoid driving yourself crazy about what and what not to eat, follow common sense advice: everything in moderation.
12
@ArtIsWork I wish that advice held true for all of us. It certainly sounds like common sense, doesn't it? But it just isn't that simple. I've always been thin and fit, but I'm pre-diabetic, so I've been on a ketogenic (low-carb/high-fat) diet for years. Do I miss toast? Yes. Is it worth eating a piece of toast and feeling terrible later? Absolutely not.
11
Obviously they were only looking at crummy choices since they eliminated Mediterranean and vegetarian diets. They just wanted to see which one was the worst--sugar, fat or those high protein diets--at least in a laboratory male mouse's circumstances. Although only a small study, it does help vindicate those of us who understand that adding 2 T of olive oil to an 8-serving dish is way better than adding half a cup. Sad that most recipes in the NYT food section (Martha Shulman the wonderful exception) are so unaligned with healthy home cooked meals. Methinks NYT is catering to people's weaknesses (which sells recipe subscriptions) rather than appealing to people to try harder to eat better.
4
it is becoming more and more evident....Sugar does not make you fat....FAT makes you fat and not just fat but SATURATED fats. the highest source of fat in our diets is Animal products - meat from cows, pigs, chicken and even fish and seafood. Treatment : a WHOLE FOOD PLANT DIET. plants, grains, fruits, all that.....
1
@lola4md I wish that were true for all of us. The plant based diet, followed strictly,only caused weight gain , thyroid suppression and extreme inflammation for me. And yet, I have known others that have had great success with it. Please...one size does not fit all.
21
@lola4md
Naturally fatty foods are satiating. Lack of protein and a high carb diet stimulates more appetite. Humans are adapted to be omnivores. Stop pushing a one-size-fits-all diet on the rest of us.
If you really believe sugar doesn't make you fat, try two weeks of soda and donuts (neither animal foods nor saturated fats in those...)
1
Another 10 minutes I’ll never get back.........
Is it REALLY a BIG mystery how we get fat?
I really object to animal testing.
6
Duh. The food we eat and the exercise we lack just might explain it. Calories in, calories out.
4
@ThePB https://idmprogram.com/first-law-thermodynamics-irrelevant
2
No foods "make" us fat. Eating too much of them does.
How many more inane diet articles, books, and programs need to come out before people accept the simple principle of weight loss?
2
Of course, we aren't mice. I went on a high-fat, low-carb diet, lost 20% of my body weight, and have kept it off for 3 years. I also stopped being diabetic.
14
No more cheese in the trap to bait the mice, even if it's generous to increase the fat content for a treat that makes them happy, yest at that very point in their lives, the moment the just comes before the next one when they won't need to worry about being happy, ever again. I only hope that when, in some future life, I'm a mouse, my host won't begrudge me the cheese and that her cat would prefer it to a slow and pudgy mouse!
4
Great article!
1
As a middle aged man happily married and in a very close relationship to a wife who has gained 30 pounds in the last decade, I can tell you exactly how humans gain weight: They eat too much.
17
@george and I'm sure you haven't gained an ounce since you walked down the aisle!
9
STOP TESTING ON MICE and OTHER NON HUMAN SPECIES!!! Just stop!
Selfish, wrong, torturous, cruel and inhumane. Also inaccurate to test on species other than Homosapiens for their benefit only.
Test on the researchers, medical professors, scientists and volunteers who have fat issues or those who need to gain weight.
Stop the grants ASAP going to animal testing! Ban animal testing, a barbaric and unethical way to test. Humans only for humans!
23
@August Wright - unfortunately human studies take too long to bear useful data, they use mice because they are very similar to us genetically and have shorter life spans, meaning we can get results much faster. There have been massive human studies on diet and weight gain but they take 20+ years to come to fruition. I'm not advocating for animal testing, just explaining why they do it. Overall I think the useful info from this article is that the high-fat diet didn't lead to weight gain because it satiated them faster meaning they probably took in less calories overall, while the low-fat diets didn't and they ate more.
8
@August Wright
That's unrealistic. Without animal testing, the drugs that keep me alive would never have been developed. And now those drugs are used to help animals. It's not as simple as you seem to think.
11
@August Wright
so glad to hear you'll be volunteering your first, second and third born to be test subjects. I'm sure you won't subject them to the horrors of vacination either.
Life will be so much more interesting with all those neat old friends like small pox and polio back with us again
3
Don't get it - this sentence seems to contradict the whole point of the story:
"Even super-high-fat diets, consisting of more than 60 percent fat, did not lead to significant weight gains, and the mice on those diets consumed less food over all than their counterparts, presumably because they simply could not stomach so much fat. "
Typo???????
14
@EndoftheOs
This confused me too. I think the article was saying mice on moderately high fat diets were most likely to become obese, but mice on super high fat diets were not. The article says "Even super-high-fat diets, consisting of more than 60 percent fat, did not lead to significant weight gains, and the mice on those diets consumed less food over all than their counterparts, presumably because they simply could not stomach so much fat."
It might be like a group of humans offered an all butter diet (super high fat), and another offered an all ice cream diet (high fat). The humans in the butter group just couldn't stand anymore butter after awhile, but the ice cream group was able to keep on enjoying their delicious frozen meals.
I, for one, would volunteer for a three month stint in the ice cream group.
14
@EndoftheOs
I was confused as well because it seemed to contradict the fatty-diets-make-you-fat conclusion. Then I realized, further down, that moderately fatty diets are worse than highly fatty diets. It is a logical flow error in the article, probably introduced during the editing process by shuffling sentences around.
5
This fluff piece was high in fat and low in nutrition. How about naming some actual foods that humans consume that might correlate to the findings.
25
Ask bodybuilders which foods make them fat. Processed Carbs, carbs, carbs. The proof is not in the no-carb pudding flavored protein drinks.
9
The usual caveats about it's just one study and needs to be replicated and mice aren't humans aside, this is not encouraging for those who proclaim, with little evidence, that it is sugar which is at the root of our obesity problem.
Let's see the experiment that shows that high-fructose corn syrup makes animals gain weight. That by itself would not settle the question of what is happening with humans, but it would certainly be another piece of the puzzle. Such experiments should not be hard to carry out, or replicate. The results would be interesting.
3
The drawing is disgusting; shame on you.
7
Like so many diet and nutrition related articles in the Times, excluding Jane Brody, this article is really just click bait and one in which no meaningful recommendations can be made for humans. Please stop making headlines out of single studies and do some in-depth reporting on nutrition. Articles like these serve as a real disservice to readers.
39
@ML I agree that this article is not helpful, but I disagree about Jane Brody's articles, I find them useless. I wish they would print more articles by Gary Taubes. After reading an article by him on 7/19/17 I went on a ketogenic diet for the last year and a half I lost 25 pounds an kept it off. I've never been healthier or felt better. Keto is generally 5% carbs, 20% protein and 75% fat. I don't eat sugar, grains or starch, the carbs I do eat are leafy green veggies. Keto is free: https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/keto_in_a_nutshell
4
But fat certainly isn't what is making the US population so obese, it is clearly the huge increase in sugar consumption. Could it be just a terrible diet of processed foods (which just coincidently are higher in sugar) are what makes humans fat?
15
So it’s unethical to allow humans to take part in this experiment but it’s perfectly fine to force an animal - in this case mice? Shameful. The difference between humans and animals is a man made difference that benefits only man.
14
@Jax good luck getting volunteers for the high fat part of the study
2
@chris w It's a worthless study anyway. Why punish poor animals for no good purpose? Put down the cupcake and go for a walk - there, study over!
2
@chris w Then forgo the study, if humans aren't willing to make the sacrifice. It isn't ethical to force suffering and ill health on other creatures, regardless of the intended outcome.
It seems like most articles about nutrition by "experts" ignore the economics behind food production and the desire of the food industry to achieve one goal: profits. It's all about the money. Food producers often will do anything to make their food irresistible and find that "bliss point" so people eat more and more. It might be more sugar or salt or fat etc. and the goal is to sell as much product as possible. I recently saw a chart that graphed the steady rise in U.S. pizza consumption along with the steady rise in obesity. Pizza is the perfect combination of saturated fat, sugar (added in tomato paste), and salt. It's hard to resist. I just wish more emphasis or at least acknowledgement was made of the goal of food producers to make money.
20
My theory: it's not what you eat but how much you eat. Also, if you want to lose weight, try eating a large late lunch and no dinner, easing off to a very light dinner as a way of life.
20
Source of funding is always of interest. From Dan Styer, Wakeman, OH 4h ago:
"The study was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Program (XDB13030100), the 1000 Talents program, and a Wolfson merit award to J.R.S., and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31570409) and funds from Guangdong Academy of Sciences (2017GDASCX-0107) to Q.L."
9
Did I miss something...but what was the conclusion of this piece?
20
@Boregard Don't me a mouse, stay human.
d
Why not use female rats to begin with? And why only “hope” to use them in the future? Yet another sexist study. Harumph.
15
I agree, but the reason they don't is that due to hormonal fluctuations in females, they cannot reach consistency in response to different foods. Which just shows you why not one diet fits all. Females do not responds as easily to weight loss diets as men either, partly because of their lower muscle mass and higher bodyfat compared to males. Muscle burns more calories than fat tissue does.
7
Hormonal fluctuations in female mice make it harder to draw conclusions. Just like how most neurological studies only consider right-handed people. And it’s extremely hard to get grants, so scientists can only hope that their favorite proposals get funding.
There’s no conspiracy here.
4
@Kara, Sam: So an experiment that is irrelevant to half the population is OK? Actually, irrelevant to more than half the population if you consider the fact the majority of the elderly are women. The real answer is that this study was done outside the US. In the US, to get a grant, you have to use a realistic population (including women and other groups).
Here we go again. Are we going back to the age of Snackwells?
7
@MBH Exactly.
Snackwells for all! Have we learned nothing these past thirty years of low-fat dieting?
3
Eat real food, mostly plants, not very much - Michael Pollan
19
The kind of food that makes us fat is TOO MUCH FOOD
35
I'll keep this in my if I'm reincarnated as a mouse.
23
We are not mice. This study shows what makes mice fat, not what makes humans fat.
8
@Allison Bradford
It’s not that simplistic.
2
The Times should read itself. Common sugar is sucrose. In the body, sucrose hydrolyses into fructose and glucose. The Times very persuasively published two articles, among others, demonstrating that fructose is largely metabolized into fat in the human body. The lecture alluded in the first linkg, by Dr. Robert Lustig, is hugely informative and contrary to this Chinese mouse study. The earlier article is confirmatory.
"Is Sugar Toxic?", https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html and in 2008, "Does Fructose Make You Fatter?" https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/does-fructose-make-you-fatter/
The lectures available on Youtube and the published articles on this are legion, Chinese mice notwithstanding.
10
ANY kind of food will make you fat if you eat a lot of it.
Some foods can be physiologically accumulated in adipocytes much easier and faster than others, of course, but ALL can do it eventually.
Moderation in all things edible.
5
I am sick of studies like this. Human beings are not all the same. And I certainly don't take much stock in studies where mice are used.
10
@susan You should take mice studies seriously. One of the reasons they are widely used in medical research is the fact that they are surprisingly genetically similar to us.
6
Would you rather the study locked up and intentionally fattened humans instead?
2
@Sam
Yeah, that’s always been a worry but is especially worrisome these days. Let’s hope Trump doesn’t decide that humans crossing our borders should be used as subjects for such experiments.
Curious that Reynolds would choose this amusement from the abundance of studies & data available that address human weight gain and current epidemic obesity.
Is she perhaps heavily invested in raising research mice?
5
We know that fat people will lose weight on ketogenic diets which are VERY high in fat -- more than 60 percent of calories. But the ketogenic diet is also very low carbohydrate.
This mice study might be indicating that high fat is a problem when it's also accomplanied by a high level of carbohydrates.
A nice follow up to this study would be to give the obese mice the equivalent of a ketogenic diet -- I bet the weight would just melt off, like it does for humans.
13
The Times does the public immense disservice by dishonestly trying to imply this has any relevance to human health. The species differences are so immense as to make this study, however interesting, clinically irrelevant. We know a lot about who gets metabolic syndrome, obesity and diabetes in our society and how. This is the key triad that drives the disasterous health problems obesity brings with it. We have to keep humans healthy, not mice.
18
@NRoad
Yes, this is like a man looking for his keys under the lamp post, when he lost them elsewhere, because the light is better there than where he lost them.
9
Although the rising obesity rate is a complex issue, it's occurrence is hardly surprising. Yes, there is a proliferation of convenient and highly processed food as well as fast food restaurants, but food giants are not entirely to blame. Schools no longer routinely offer home economics classes so fewer people know how to plan a meal, make a budget, shop for ingredients, or cook a meal. The reality cooking shows, though entertaining, do not really fill the resulting educational void. Consequently, fewer people can actually cook. Add to this the fact that school recesses have become shorter or largely disappeared, so many young people are less active. Students often have access to vending machines at school. Women, who historically did most of the cooking and meal planning, now have the option of working outside of the home. Even if someone knows how to cook, who has time?
11
@Louise Rising obesity is not complicated! People are eating calorie dense foods and too much of it. It's not that complicated.
3
@SF Yes, you have a point, SF. But, WHY are obese people eating too much calorie dense food? My point remains: fewer people know how to plan and cook a meal. The cooks of years past were largely women, and they now work outside the home.
1
I haven't read the study yet, rarely read studies about mice, but did one group lounge in front of the television and the other get out and exercise? Also, do your readers understand that this is basic science and until it is applied to us more advanced species and duplicated by someone else it is meaningless to non researchers?
4
Seems decades ago most people ate more high fat diets than later, when people became aware of fat, carbs, protein, etc. In my youth, people didn't even know about the food groups.
I think generally, people were not as fat as today, yet they ate bacon and eggs, whole milk, plenty of meat, butter, potatoes and deserts such as full fat icecream, plus pies, and cakes.
If memory serves, there were no 'low fat, or fat free' groceries or even whole wheat bread in the supermarkets.
Are there any studies on previous generations?
33
@Meredith As a child, during the 50's, we ate at home. There were snacks and an abundance of soda pop even at the dinner table. My mother complained about nitrates in the lunch meat. She frequently became ill from additives in foods.
1
Let's for a change just look back to 2-3 decades ago: the size of food portions has massively increased. A kid who is 3 years old is eating a cone he can barely hold with both hands and has 3 scoops of ice cream in it. A chocolate chip cookie is the size of a baby's face. A burger patty is equal to 2-3 patties of old. 12 oz soft drinks are standard in cans but bottles carry so much more and yet people say "it's only a small bottle/day".
Why reinvent the wheel when we can start by just "normalizing" what a serving size should be? Would save billions in chronic diseases and medications.
93
I've been on a ketogenic diet for the last three or so months. It involves eating lots of high-fat foods and absolutely no foods, including fruit, or drinks with moderate or high sugar content. Any and all carbs are also a no-no, except that naturally in vegetables, an my protein intake is also somewhat limited.
I've lost about 15 pounds on this diet and have lots more energy than previously. Of course I regularly workout, too.
Moreover, since I've been on the diet my kidney functions have improved (they were previously slipping precariously for reasons probably -- my nephrologist isn't sure -- having to do with the blood pressure meds I was on (they've since been switched).
Bottom line: I do not believe fat alone is the reason for obesity.
17
I've been on a plant - based whole food, no added sugar or oil diet for four months and went from 220 down to 165. Very little exercise. Saturated fat is associated with coronary heart disease. If you've lost weight great. Consider making a switch for deeper health benefits.
1
@Nathan Lemmon
I eat a lot of coconut fat, organic, and dairy, also organic. Nuts and olive oil round out by fats. I had coronary disease in my 40s and 50s; been heart disease free since. I'm now almost 76. Thanks.
This is because a ketogenic diet, by eliminating sugar and lots of carbs, puts your body into a “starvation” mode. Your body must burn fat as its only source of energy. But be careful, because it is not sustainable, and when you transition off, you could gain far more weight back than you lost. Cutting portion sizes is a slower, but more sustainable, way to lose weight.
12
Which kind of foods?
Too much.
18
The researchers apparently will do research on female mice at a later time. Hmmmm. How hard can it be to locate some female mice so that the research can be more meaningful for all. Female mice add the aspect of different hormones, pregnancy, size. Again, if you can find male mice, I think there is a good chance you can find some female mice.
17
I suspect that it has to do with limiting variables. Like you said, pregnancy and hormones, and probably including other factors can ask affect the study. Controlling for several new variables can become straining in their budget and time to do the study. Basically, this study by itself isn't anywhere near conclusive and it really shouldn't be reported in the news because of that. But it gets clicks and a whole bunch of traction in the comments and social media, which generates funds and free advertising for nyt.
We need large scale, long term studies, preferably done on humans to even begin to understand the affect of various diets on the population at large. Everything else is just hinting at possible conclusions.
2
@PHDiva
Its not access, but controls. Its easier to control factors with males, as you listed the issues in need of control with female mice.
@PHDiva
perhaps they were all busy giving birth...to more men-mice!
Fat doesn't make you fat. Carbs ( bread, rice, potatoes, cake, cookies, chips, bagels, pizza, and burritos) make you fat...Cut out the carbs, move a little, and you'll maintain your current weight....maybe even lose some.
15
@Harley Leiber
No. Rice and potatoes do not inherently make people fat. Nor simple, whole grain, lightly processed breads. Asian regions consume tons of rice as a main food staple, many Europeans eat bread at every meal, and do not struggle with obesity.
You need to learn your good carbs from bad ones.
In fact, processed carbs should be removed from the Carb category...or vice versa. Because too many people confuse the two, and deem all carbs as bad. Its not so. Fruit is a carb...
Its the SAD, standard American diet, high in processed foods, with little nutritional value, and portions and frequency, compounded by sedentary lifestyles that make people fat. Its not one food type...especialy when its a misunderstood food group.
14
Eat sweet potatoes, rice, beans, oatmeal and fruits along with vegetables of your choice and be super healthy. No animal protein and no added sugar or oil. It's easy.
2
@Harley Leiber Read the article again. What you spouted here, is completely wrong at least in the context of the study this page is about.
1
Re-write the nutrition books! Oh wait, we're still waiting for the last re-write that said it's sugar that makes you fat. It's at the printers.
7
Here we go again...
14
well I guess this proves, again, how humans are different from mice. this idea that eating a diet high in carbs and esp high fructose corn syrup didnt make them fat shows what a poorly designed study it was.
two things were glaringly obvious besides the glaringly obvious corn syrup poison omission; one, the mice fed the high fat diet were not put into ketosis, just had a bunch of fat shoved at them, eliminating any evaluation whatsoever of the effectiveness of a keto diet and two, they didnt design the diets to do the ONE major thing that more greatly affects obesity than anything else in humans; control of insulin levels. thats almost completely what its about for everybody.
you do whatever you is necessary to reduce net blood insulin levels and you'll greatly reduce if not eliminate, fat storage.
and after several months your weight will drop. alot. al long as you dont contuinue to stuff yourself with 3000 calories a day and then wonder why your "low fat" or "mediterranean diet" wont pull the fat rolls you.
its no more about a low fat diet than about drinking crummy lite american beer so you can reduce your "carbs". reduce your blood insulin levels and you will lose weight. period.
next study (if they really do want to fin an "answer", one that will also help put manufacturers of processed food poison out of business) will be to design diets that reduce insulin levels to near zero and see what happens. my bet is they wont b/c it would work and they know it.
6
Here’s a really unscientific fact. Cook pasta rice and wash pots. Everything sticks if not enough fat oil added hence it’s gonna stick to you. Then notice the salmon flushes right off everything .
1
Mice are a poor nutritional model for humans. <Yawn>
14
This a single study by a single scientist. The data has to be replicated by others. Moreover, the methodology used to achieve the results are also subject to challenge. Finally, I don't see anywhere where funding is mentioned. Was the study wholly funded by the university or from other people or organizations.
I don't understand why the NYT is so irresponsible in how they report on nutrition and human health. It is irresponsible to portray each study as settled science. No wonder people get confused.
45
The first sentence of this essay is "One fundamental and unanswered question in obesity research is what kind of foods contribute most to the condition."
This essay reports on the work of 21 scientists, not "a single scientist". The link shows that "The study was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Program (XDB13030100), the 1000 Talents program, and a Wolfson merit award to J.R.S., and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31570409) and funds from Guangdong Academy of Sciences (2017GDASCX-0107) to Q.L." Apparently, MA was too lazy to click on the link.
I don't understand why MA is so irresponsible in how s/he claims that this essay reports "settled science". It is a shame that MA is so confused.
12
Maybe read the article in Cell magazine because the Times included a link. This was a 5 stage study. 5 separate groups of mice were used, and results were replicated with each group. This article is simply a brief restatement of the Cell article not a conclusion.
7
Sugar and refined carbohydrates. Duh.
4
One hopes a stronger, more advanced race of beings appears on Planet Earth, captures those conducting these experiments, puts them in cages and subjects them to all kinds of medical experiments, causing them hideous pain, fear and finally death before throwing their bodies in the incinerator.
And here I am, almost 60 years old and biking, swimming and weight lifting and eating moderately, mostly foods that grow in ground, since I was 18, and weighing the same as I did in 1979.
You don't need a study; you just need to get outlaw soda and require a minimum of exercise per week in order to keep your health insurance.
Not in this lifetime!
The cruelty and obliviousness of the humans is never less than astonishing.
11
Scientists hope to include female mice in later experiments...
Is it up to the mice? Like, ew, so not eating that high-fat kibble! Ask some guy mouse to eat it, they’ll eat anything.
Does this hamster wheel make me look fat?
9
It would help me to know who funded the study.
8
@Ronin: "The study was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Program (XDB13030100), the 1000 Talents program, and a Wolfson merit award to J.R.S., and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31570409) and funds from Guangdong Academy of Sciences (2017GDASCX-0107) to Q.L."
4
@Ronin
Agreed!
These articles on diet always get so many comments, but commentators seldom read the article carefully.
Tthe limited scope of the study is clearly state:
“ 'It looks like consuming high-fat diets, if they aren’t extremely high fat, leads to weight gain, IF YOU ARE A MOUSE (my added caps),' says John Speakman, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, who oversaw the study."
IF you are a mouse.
It is basic research to lay out further study.
10
@Roger “ 'It looks like consuming high-fat diets, if they aren’t extremely high fat, leads to weight gain, IF YOU ARE A MOUSE -----
my fav line in the article!
For this human, low carb--50-100 carbs per day has helped me lose over 20 pounds over a year and keep it off for 6 months.
I am 52, 5'9" and 172 pounds. I eat a lot of protein and fats and feel satisfied in a way I do not when I ate a lot of carbs--I do not get insulin spikes the way I used to. I am moderately active.
16
Too many calories make you fat. If you want to loose weight stop paying attention to rats and eat fewer calories.
7
@Scott Spencer This study was done using mice, not rats.
1
@Scott Spencer
"Too many calories..." is a tautology -- it's a true description, but tells us nothing about _why_ a person is overeating.
While research is ok, and one can tailor their own weight loss diet to fit their needs the bottom line is still true, less calories in, weight loss occurs.
It's not rocket science. The trick is to want to do it. If you don't you will scapegoat, intellectualize, rationalize, ax grind, etc. instead of admitting you don't want to do it.
5
So, what should a type 2 diabetics takeaway be from this article? They are currently told by many nutritionists/medical professionals to minimize carbohydrate consumption and eat generous amounts of fat (ketogenic, Atkins, etc). Plus, for an obese, type 2 diabetic losing weight is the best thing they can do to lower blood sugar. I guess they can't act on these findings.
1
I find that drinking too much alcohol tends to make me gain weight. So I cut it out, exercise 6 days a week for an hour a day(elliptical, running, free weights). Lo and behold I lost my excess weight.
4
@Smoke'em If U Got'em I think drinking doesn’t make you gain weight. What happens is it doesn’t let you lose weight, even if you are on a diet. When alcohol is consumed, it’s burned first as a fuel source before your body uses anything else. This includes glucose from carbohydrates or lipids from fats.
When your body is using alcohol as a primary source of energy, the excess glucose and lipids end up, unfortunately for us, as adipose tissue, or fat.
5
Single ingredient foods, unprocessed foods, vegetables, fruits, red meat low in fat, chicken, fish, eggs, moderate amounts of rice and potatoes, milk, nuts are all reasonable diet choices. Portion control is important. How hard is that? It is not difficult. Use reason.
12
I can’t stand the publication of these studies - what works on mice doesn’t always hold true in humans.
14
It’s called basic science. Scientists often start with mice or rats and then work their way up to humans. Of course you can’t generalize from mice to humans, but scientists can begin to understand some basic underlying processes that may be helpful in eventually understanding humans.
5
Humans aren’t mice. The flawed scientific mouse model has landed us into the obesity and diabetic epidemic. As a physician I see the impact of diet with excess of carbohydrates and sugars are doing to patients in a culture of immediate gratification and addiction. . It has been quiet obvious that side effects of diets high in carbohydrates are affecting 2/3 of a population with excess weight and obesity . The Atkins diet and keto diet have been clinically demonstrated to show substantival weight loss, and sustained weight reduction if one does not go back to carbohydrates. Making conclusions based on mice models for human obesity is deeply flawed. Just go to the mall and look around and tell me what you see and what people are eating and you can draw conclusions for yourself.
51
@Marcus If you look closely at what those people are eating at the mall, I can assure you that it is not just carbohydrates, but plenty of fat and salt as well. Not to mention chemical flavors and preservatives.
As a physician you must know that a diet high in fruits and vegetables will not make you fat and will prevent some cancers and cardiovascular disease. Just read the scientific studies. The WHO and the NHS has linked red meat consumption to certain cancers. A high fat diet is linked to breast cancer.
6
@Kara The fats that are being served up at the mall are mostly toxic fats. The salts are typically unhealthy too but natural mineral rich salts are essential (Celtic Sea Salt, Himalayan Pink Salt). Check out the book "The Salt Fix". Healthier fat sources such as olive oil, avocados, nuts seed oils, grass-fed butter or Ghee, & yes coconut & MCT Oil are absent from these foods. Those foods are also laden with sugar and carbohydrates. Same goes for meat consumption. Many of the cancer studies consisted of poor meat sources, even some including processed deli meats. Like fats, here are better sources of meat including grass-fed or pastured raised meat sources that are much healthier than conventionally produced commercial meat. Pastured eggs are great too. Our brains have high cholesterol levels & requirements and even the US dietary guidelines (which abetted the current epidemic have reversed their stance on eggs.
2
@Marcus Why blame research for the obesity epidemic, when you have corporations exploiting the very same research to addict and supply people with the terrible food they "want".
Sheesh.
1
Did anyone else learn in 8th grade biology that the systems of mice are so radically different that we should never base serious ideas on the assumption that humans respond like mice. Isn't that why a case is made for using other mammals?
Here's my anecdotal evidence about diet. I lost 25 pounds in 3 months on a high fat diet and I'm continuing to eat high fat, although it's not animal-based. I get the high fat from avocado and coconut.I'm happier than I was when I ate lots of carbs, I don't crave food, and I have lots of energy.
22
You’re gonna have to tell us what you’re doing! And congrats
So, what kinds of fats would qualify for humans as being irresistible and making us fat? I would say fried foods, snack chips, peanut butter, and, especially, cheese (probably got the mice, too).
5
As the Italians say, “Permit me to doubt.” Engineered mouse kibble is not the same as a high-quality human diet, and mice are not people.
My diet consists of no sugar or processed carbs, with a lot of high-quality fats: EVOO, nuts, eggs, full-fat dairy, and fatty fish. My BP and lipid profile are the envy of 18 year olds; I’m not skinny, but I haven’t gained any weight, either.
Now take a look at our fellow Americans loaded down with crap in the grocery cart: sugar, sodas, pastry, processed, high-fat carbs of every description. Many of them drive motorized carts in the grocery store. Dr. Robert Lustig has done excellent work on how sugar makes us fat: his lectures are available on youtube.
21
@Comp I've been on a low-carb eating program for five months: lots of nuts, eggs, fish, yogurt, fruits & vegs, red wine with my dinner. My blood sugar levels are way down, cholesterol is down, and I've lost about 10 pounds. I'm a believer.
13
A high carbohydrate diet is not necessarily the same thing as a high sugar diet, but everyone keeps confusing these two because of popular articles. Eating lots of fruits and vegetables, which are mostly carbs, has shown to be very important for cancer and cardiovascular disease prevention. Even people with great lipid profiles can have cancer. It sounds like you are getting healthy fats, obviously we need essential fatty acids, omega 6 and 3, but other than that, which scientific study says we need loads of fat for disease prevention?
9
Why didn't the author come out and say it? This article relies on the cited study to argue that claims that low carbohydrate, high fat diets can manage weight are untrue?
State your thesis when pushing a claim.
6
Haha! I got a kraft singles ad in my feed. No one makes cheese like the Americans!
4
@Dave Thats' not cheese.
I didn't get much useful information from this article. What does this mean? -> “It looks like consuming high-fat diets, if they aren’t extremely high fat, leads to weight gain, if you are a mouse,” says John Speakman, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, who oversaw the study.
Oh well, back to "All things in moderation".
8
I would be significantly more moved with knowing for each diet, what calories these mice were consuming, and what their macros were. If the "high" fat mice were eating the equivalent of 2000 calories versus 1200 from other diets and eating a mixed bag of fat, protein and carbs, well yeah that would explain why they chunked up a bit.
10
@Hannah that's what gets me too! I read and re-read the article to see if it was mentioned whether they controlled for caloric intake! THIS IS IMPORTANT PEOPLE.
Dubious study, but brilliant illustration! Poor mousie.
15
Sound and fury, signifying nothing. Maybe fat is worse, but then all those other reputable-sounding studies said sugar is worse. Perhaps all we need is the air that we breathe. In the meantime, NY Times, a moratorium on these articles! Surely there is something else for these reporters to write about.
7
Results for this group of rats, mice and whatever other living creatures are studied in the environment of a caging-laboratory,
as well as awake and asleep humans, in our daily roles in a range of environments, networks, contexts and situations as selected data are gathered. Validly analyzed to achieve some information-knowing represent ing levels of generalisability. Which is then somehow transmuted into created temporary or more long(er)-term understanding. Insights, and at times, even types of wisdom which is usable. Query: what do/can these data mean for a specific rodent? What can be reasonably predicted for a specific rodent? And holding in abeyance the inherent flaws in translating processes and their outcomes, of organisms from lower evolutionary levels, based upon some consensualized criteria, to those a bit or even lots above them- in some ways, but not in others-what does specific dieting mean, predictably, for a specific Tom, Juan, Achmad, Maria, Susan, Fatma, Mukta? In a specific physical environment? Culture? Conflicted or peaceful "scape?" Lastly, in what ways, if any, were the data used inorder to prevent the ever-present, preventable-flaws of "failure-blindness?"
1
I don't really want to be compared to a rodent.
For one thing, rodents don't have the exact same metabolism that people do, and for another, I don't care for cheese as much as rodents do.
:-)
1
The heading is misleading. It should read “Which Kinds of Foods Make Male Mice Fat?” Evolutionary circumstances have determined that optimal mice chow is very different from optimal human chow. But thank for letting me know how to fatten up mice. In the meantime I will continue eating my very high saturated fat diet that has shed the last 10 pounds of unwanted body fat has now kept me slim and fit for 3 years.
17
Great to hear that science is actually entering the picture. The national approach to diet has been dominated by true believers rather than guided by science-based facts. Remember when the diet powers-that-be wanted all of us to eat nothing but pasta? And how utterly certain they were? Based on the idea that runners ate pasta before running? No one noticed they ate it because it turned into sugar?
Will be so glad when the true believers are ousted from the national diet centers. I'm hoping I'm still alive and kicking when/if that happens.
1
Gender discrimination again. As pointed out before, men lose weight faster than women. And yes, the NYT's articles are a little short on details.
As for studies, who cares any more? First fat is bad, then good, wine in moderation is good, then bad. And who is paying for these contradictory studies?
11
"Rodent" studies are desperate attempts to find meaning, they should be excluded in the discussion of human diet outcomes.
10
Eat food. Drink wine. With friends and family. Relax.
30
My conclusion is that this may be the best study yet to demonstrate that mice are not a good model for human diets. Meta-analyses of human Randomized Controlled Trials in men and women have shown that low carbohydrate diets are statistically significantly better at CAUSING weight loss than low fat diet. Meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials of ketogenic diets in men and women have also demonstrated statistically significant weight loss compared to high carbohydrate diets.
The authors are very direct about limitations of their study. They used only casein for protein. Their fats are predominantly (>80%) Palm Oil and Cocoa Butter. There are already well known differences between mice and humans -- mice are better at gluconeogeneis from protein and lipogenesis from carbohydrates. So maybe this is just one more difference -- mice fatten with saturated fat diets.
20
My laboratory at Duke University was the first to describe this phenomenon in mice back in 1988, and later provide some support for it in humans. So, let me clear up some of the questions and confusion raised by the comments of readers. First, the phenomenon has been shown to occur in females mice as well. It just occurs to a greater extent in males. Second, its not dependent upon calories consumed. The C57BL/6J mouse used in the cited study will gain more weight from fat than it will from carbohydrate even when calorie content is controlled. Third, this sensitivity to fat varies from strain to strain. In other words, it is based on genetics. We all know many people who seem to be impervious to fat or caloric intake while others are exquisitely sensitive to what they eat. That's part of the point of the studies. Diet interacts with genetics. Finally, while it is very difficult to do such studies on humans, our group showed that diets composed of almost all sucrose do not cause weight gain in healthy obese women. So, we can extrapolate somewhat from mouse to man.
11
This from 5 yrs ago in the NYT. A reminder that we are the net result of multiple systems, and while it is enlightening to isolate single agents for clinical trials, the etiology of obesity includes very complex systems interactions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/health/gut-bacteria-from-thin-humans-...
3
In addition to the cellular need for energy, our nutritional needs have been modified by thousands of years of evolution. The work we did, the food that was available and the cooking methods we used. This can be recognized by the different traditional diets of various regions. Then the corporate food supply comes into play, it doesn't work for everyone, it's based on profits, not our need for nutrition. Not to mention the psychological obsession for a certain body type. In any case, a particular mouse strain has not much been a part of the dynamics of human food consumption of the past, and informs very little.
2
Eat food. Less of it. —Michael Pollen
12
OH my. Here we go again. Moderate fat... not full fat (Atkins Diet) makes one -- well fat.... along with protein and sugar. Let's see how many years has it been since the Atkins Diet first became a custom of the land. (Close to 50.) In its latest iteration -- the young will only consume alcohol with the newly named version of Atkins -- ketogenic!
People are LUCKY they can be fussy.... and throw too much food away -- even compositing it -- does not really forgive throwing it out -- except when it is totally inedible like the Dept. of Agriculture support-agribusiness stuff (peaches, apples that will never be edible) served as part of school lunches.
Did we the taxpayer again pay for another study that proves what was already proven? (And we don't have $$ for this that and the other thing. ENUFF ALREADY.
2
While this is an interesting article - it misses a very important point: C57BL/6J is a unique strain of mice different in degree from every other inbred mouse strain. Other strains could well respond differently to the same diet (called genotype x environment interactions). Jackson Laboratory has a Phenome database that can be used to compare physiologies and responses of different strains. As an example, C57BL6 has the highest nonfasting glucose (males 195 mg/dL) level of 10 strains (BALB/cJ males ~120 mg/dL) and these strains respond differently to glucose challenge. Making conclusions for humans based on a single mouse strain (essentially equivalent to one individual) is not valid. Same can be said for outbred strains.
8
@Jim
Aha, but maybe the C57BL/6J mouse strain is a good model for humans with high non-fasting glucose, as is found with Type II diabetes ...
1
The ketogenic diet (same applies to Paleo) is an extreme eating plan which would have us discard most of the world's food. Living off the fat of the land is unsustainable, and unnecessary. The takeaway from this study is clearly to eat less fat - exactly what the supposedly incompetent or corrupt scientific authorities have been telling us for decades.
The original pillar of low-carb "science" - that carbohydrate calories are uniquely fattening - has been repeatedly debunked. Careful study of existing data might have saved us all some grief. But when do quacks and religionists bother with scholarship? Faced with a disproven "hypothesis" (conslusion), they tried again: carbohydrates lead to over-consumption of food. This study, and the weight of all the other evidence to date, suggests that that, too is wrong. Critical thinking about nutrition appears to be difficult, especially when the waters are muddied by conspiracy scientists like Taubes and Teicholz, So we end up with conclusions like creme brulee is mostly sugar, phytates are poison, whole wheat has a speck of protein, and most Americans are on a low-fat diet.
As for overall health,there is virtually no data on the decades-long impacts of the ketogenic diet on longevity and healthspan. Most anti-carb claims are based either on oversimplifed or misapplied understanding of biological processes and markers, or a sly rebranding of fat and sugar-laden junk foods as "carbs".
3
Keto is basically a sugar free diet. It’s not extreme. You remove bread, pasta, grains, sugar and eat more vegetables along with protein. People unfamiliar with think people on a keto or paleo diet sit around and eat whole cows morning, noon and night. So you can’t negate the diet without actually seeing the results that people are getting with blood work to prove the results.
5
@childofsol For those interested in the science backing up keto, here is one of man sources: https://www.ketogenic-diet-resource.com/
1
@Mary Keto is extreme. And most keto diets require you eat more fat and not increase the amount of protein. Also it requires that you don't eat fruit or potatoes and other starchy vegetables.
Though the authors downplay this finding, the study actually found that diets very high in fat lead to weight loss. As the authors of the study admit, "Therefore, increasing dietary fat content up to 60% fat leads to increased energy intake and causes adiposity in mice; however, further increase in the fat content led to a slight decrease in the energy intake via reduction in the absolute weight of food intake, and as a consequence, body weight and fat mass decreased." This is exactly what those of us on a keto diet find: eating a diet of about 75% healthy fats and under 10% carbohydrates promotes fat loss -- and also increases overall health.
13
Interesting, even in mouse world the men come first.
9
The author needs to read " How Not To Die" by Dr. Michael Gregor or "The Starch Soultion" by Dr. John McDougall that are supported by many studies that show that eating a high fat diet either from animal fat, plants ( Avacado's and Nuts) will make you fat. Its not rocket science to know that even eating "healthy fats" will also make you fats. Its only rocket science when doctors, dietitians, nutritionists, lobbyists from the meat, dairy and egg industries or writers either unknowingly or willingly confuse research for their own profit or influence to meet their own needs.
3
Yet another study with useless results for women. Infuriating.
4
@FlipFlop Of course, since many of the other commentators claim that you can't extrapolate from 'mouse data' any way... (And this is only a preliminary study with followup planned with female mice) AND the authors are not making ANY recommendations for human diet choices here, no need, probably, to be infuriated yet by this groups' research.
Americans need to stop listening to experts and start experimenting themselves.
The average person will read this article and have too much trepidation to eat a high fat diet in fear that it will make them fat.
Go ahead, eat a high fat diet with little to no carbs. You'll probably lose a ton of weight and feel great. If worried, get some blood tests (although cholesterol is not a great predictor of heart disease). You're not going to die from eating high fat for a few months.
If the high fat diet doesn't work, move on to the next
28
@Chris Berube
FYI if it's not a protein or a fat it's a carbohydrate, and they all are sugar and fiber. PS milk has lactose-- sugar -- sooo children. Pear juice is very sweet and has replaced corn syrup (both are fructose) in many things.
1
@Chris Berube Yes this! I can say from personal experience that if I'm enjoying a high fat, high protein, low-ish carb diet (such as Whole 30 or similar) I can keep my weight low and eat however much I want. Or, I can eat whatever foods I want, including carbs, if I watch my portions like a hawk and serve myself about half of what my instincts would suggest. I've experimented a ton and feel more in control of my weight than ever.
This must be underwritten by the geniuses that promote high fructose corn syrup. Unfortunately, they completely forgot to study the science of metabolism...our bodies, and minds, run on fat, not sugar. That explains how they came up with this garbage.
17
Lol, another article paid for by the FAT Food or Fat medical industry. In case of starvation, eat this article, it is full of baloney. Keto gives you more energy, you burn more fat, you feel better because you have less inflammation in your joints. Well done, getting paid off by the mega corps. Sad, you can't think on your own or write an honest article.
8
Foods you eat too much of.
3
Enough already. Think "what would JC do"? That's Julia Child and she'd say everything in moderation...even moderation. I think this country has lost the true enjoyment of food...ya know, one our pleasure centers...gad, we're gonna deprive ourselves to live forever. Only we won't, it will just feel that way. ya know, like a long boring meeting.
7
Wonderful idea to study this; but largely meaningless to half of the population.
7
@Suzanne I would say largely irrelevant to 100% of the population.
6
What about female mice? Why are so many scientific studies focused on males.
5
@Judy Because scientists are chauvinists?
3
The headline makes it appear as if the article was written by a laboratory mouse.
1
Yes, but humans turn sugar into fat and the fattest people are in the good old USA where Big Sugar runs amok and where America runs on Dunkin'. Everyone--especially obese (40% of Americans) and overweight (70% of Americans) people--need to see an Australian film called "Sugarland."
8
What level of fat is considered "high-fat" as opposed to "super high-fat"?
2
@SDC It's a good question, fore understanding the study. My guess is, if you read the researchers' paper, it will clearly define the contents of the diet of each experimental group in the study.
Good to know...in case I'm reincarnated as a mouse. As a mouse, I want to be looking good, when I'm not sleeping 14 hours a day.
Another meaningless research project. Hopefully it was privately funded.
9
https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/resources/2015-2020_Dietary_Gu...
Jesus people!
All the dietary data we have has been compiled into an FDA report FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE!!!!!
Stop wasting your time reading anything else.
3
Seriously? What is wrong with humanity that we do this stuff to living creatures? Eat with thought and exercise, stop making excuses and lying to yourself. Above all stop torturing living creatures for such a foolish study.
11
@Sam Sure, but there are so many different and contradictory 'thoughts' out there - why not do the basic research and find some science behind the claims?
And yet dozens, if not hundreds of studies, have linked the obesity epidemic to the upswing in "low fat" diets which used refined sugar as an offset to the lack of flavor.
Less fat, more sugar = rise in obesity.
Most studies also show that exercise only accounts for a minor percentage of calorie use; hence, running more won't automatically wipe out the extra 1500 calories you might get through your "low fat" cookies. It's more about the diet, and ultimately, nutrition.
I think someone had extra research funding to use up before the end of the year and decided to feed mice lots of fat.
9
@J
Vital fact: Humans are not rats, so the relevance of this study to humans is on that basis alone limited.
1
Oh, come on. Even the scientist admitted the study was on MICE and it seemed to prove...well, frankly, it proves nothing. I eat a high fat diet, I'm female and I'm very thin. Everyone processes calories differently but one thing is certain: processed food causes people to get fat. I eat almost exclusively food I make myself with mostly whole grains and lots of legumes and vegetables but I love butter and eat it and cook with it every single day.
Here's the best diet advice for everyone. If you find yourself needing to buy a larger size pants, either start exercising more or start eating better.
13
@lzolatrov Yes, but how do you define "eating better"? Wasn't that the point of the study?
3
Interestingly Dr. Speakman wrote in response to question in the Comments section of the article: "Some evidence that we mentioned in the paper (and see also the comment here by Anthony Scalfani) suggest that sucrose delivered in liquid form may be more prone to causing obesity. We didn’t vary the mode of delivery in our expt and all the sucrose was in the food....We didn’t measure ketones but I think the 5% sucrose in [the 80%] diet was likely enough to prevent ketosis".
1
That's all very well and good for the mice, but when I eat sugar (or the recommended dose of carbs for that matter) I rapidly put on 25 pounds. When I quit the sugar and carbs, I drop 25 pounds in short order.
Nutrition studies have a long comeback road in front of them after all the shoddy science promoted over the last few decades because it fit conventional wisdom.
Your p value is not as convincing as my waistline.
23
1 for the statistics reference
When I lost almost 40 pounds with Weight Watchers I found that whole milk Greek yogurt was more satisfying-I did not get hungry as quickly as eating the low-fat, sugar flavored type. A modest portion of any food cannot create weight gain. And after reading The Case Against Sugar I stay away from sugar even more than before.
17
It really surprises me that we are still doing diet studies on mice. As if this is more ethical than doing diet studies on informed humans! There are billions of people on the planet who choose to eat in all kinds of different ways. There have been many good diet studies of large groups of people. The results are clear and emphatic: Those who eat a lot of fruits and vegetables while shunning meat, eggs and dairy are thinner. For more information about this, I highly recommend Dr. Michael Greger's best-selling book, "How Not to Die."
8
@Dan Frazier I'd be interested to see the studies that show eating moderate amounts of meat, eggs, and dairy make people overweight. I have a friend who follows the extremely strict Jain vegetarian diet. She and her husband are both quite overweight.
3
@Dan Frazier
Dan wants us to be ethical to the lab mice (eyeroll).
But..what was the composition of the kibble which all the mice were fed? If it was grain-based, these results are interesting but anything but conclusive.
1
Keto diet works. Unfortunately the health food editor in the NYTimes is very anti keto despite people writing in saying it works and here are their numbers. Sugar and carbs are the culprit not fat! Eat sugar and carbs with fat you will gain. Eating fat, protein and vegetables will slim you down. Read Jason Fung he explains it all.
22
@Mary
Way to not let a mere scientific experiment get in the way of your belief system!
1
@kms I have stopped reading about these experiments as truth. When I learned more often than not these studies have been paid for by drug and food industries. Coconut oil was made dirty by canola oil producers so they could promote and sell their junk oil. Coconut oil is a healthy oil and even helps with Alzheimer’s and epileptics. Can’t say that about canola! What The NY Times should write about is sugar reduction and elimination - want to lose weight and feel better this is the way to go. People do not realize how much hidden sugar there is In foods and that they routinely eat sugar as carbs. The Standard American Diet is filled with sugar carb laden foods. People complain how they can’t adjust and yet people in masses are converting when they see their friends trim down in size and medical bills, eating healthier and becoming more energetic by ditching their donuts, pasta and ice cream. The food industry is finally recognizing if they want to stay in business they need to create healthier foods, hence you see the advent of cauliflower rice in supermarkets, flavored seltzer not sugar sodas etc!
@Mary
Coconut oil is a saturated fat as is palm oil -- and which can raise LDL cholesterol.... BTW some people need calories more than do others. Koala bears eat all day because... eucalyptus leaves are not very nourishing. (And familial genetics do play a role.) Half an hour brisk exercise -- got my knees fixed and the A1C improved and the triglycerides.)
Human hormones are a significant and largely ignored component of how our bodies respond to nutritional intake. Individual variations in hormonal composition can radically alter each person's response to carbs, fat, and protein. There just isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to the question of what makes us fat or skinny, and I'm tired of scientists using these tired, outdated modalities in their research. Also, to echo other commenters, get some dang female mice!
10
The primary issue here is the assumption that mice are an acceptable proxy candidate for humans. The secondary issue is that laboratory mice are genetically homogeneous as a population and the human population is not.
Further, humans are operating in a world with various stressors that contribute to potential weight problems.
Mice are a convenient tool for experimentation. Thousands can be amassed in a relatively small area, in a controlled environment with a controlled cost.
This experimental model cannot possibly represent all the variables that result in obesity in some and not in others nor can an animal designed to eat a grain based diet be deemed a suitable proxy for an omnivore.
7
@Laura & Courtney, you have it both right. In addition, the study didn't include the analysis of many of the chemical additives in our industrialized food, which is rich in lectins among many others. Indeed, there are scores of chemicals added to our food that mimic our own, by their similiraty in the interconnecting exchange sockets between molecules. Perhaps unrealistic, but we need to consider growing some of our own food, in order to offset the chemical trash we are being fed.
3
Actually, laboratory mice are, by attentive design, a genetically homogeneous population.
1
" Even super-high-fat diets, consisting of more than 60 percent fat, did not lead to significant weight gains, and the mice on those diets consumed less food over all than their counterparts, presumably because they simply could not stomach so much fat. "
THAT is the key sentence. If they are calling 60% "super" high fat, then the "high" fat diet is less, say 50% (though it's a frustratingly inadequate article that does not give numbers), which means that the mice are eating something else for the other 50%. What if it's carbs? Why aren't they calling it a high carb diet? Or what if it's protein, why not call it a high-protein diet? There is no way to know from this article what the other half of the high-fat diet is, so no way to judge it.
22
@T
Right? I had to read the sentence about 60%+ being "super" high-fat a few times to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding what they were saying. They should have broken down each diet by % of each macro.
Plus, the fat didn't make the mice fat...the article specifically says the mice were free to eat as they please. Eating more calories than they burned is what made them fat. It's just that that specific diet (whatever it was) seemed to stop them from regulating themselves.
I would be curious to see the same study with specific macro breakdowns and for each breakdown have a group of mice that free-feed and a group that are portion controlled.
4
@T Did you read the study? It's linked to in the article. It has the detail you're asking for.
2
@T I think the biggest mistake made by the author is that this "study" is so fatally flawed that it should never have made it into the Times. Editors, where were you? The flaws of the study have been pointed out by many here. There is no definition anywhere of high fat diet. You can only eat carbs, protein or fat. Carbs are not essential for life, i.e, you can never it any carbs and be fine. Protein in excess causes insulin release and is converted to fat. The consensus is moving to a LCHF diet which is lo carb, relatively low protein and high fat. A keto diet is essential LCHF with fat constituting 80% or more of caloric intake.
BTW: research show that if you exercise your activity thereafter goes down so there is little effect from exercise for dieting ( but many other good effects for overall health).
1
A point to keep in mind: I read a lot of nutrition research. Many experiments are described as "poorly designed." A typical PubMed search can result in contradictory observations and conclusions. Secondly, many "researchers" start out with an agenda and can cherry pick research that confirms their preconception. They conveniently ignore any studies that contradict their agenda. Ancel Keys is the poster child for this kind of intellectual dishonesty. The government bought in to his flawed theory and millions of people were harmed by following Keys' guidelines. Any rigorous research has to account for all observations. A contradictory observation means the theory is flawed. Thomas Huxley made the point:
"The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."
4
The entire fitness and CrossFit world is going to be up in arms over this article. Seismic shift from “carbs bad, fat good”. Who really knows.
1
@Fatal1ty, except it doesn't say that. It just says that super high fat is better than high fat. Doesn't say that either is better than high carb.
1
Despite humans evolving to be able to survive well on low/high carb/fat/protein vegan/vegetarian/carnivore diets (depending on what was available), we want to put badges on diets or be in a camp/tribe.
One thing is for sure is we did not evolve to eat highly processed food.
Ditch the badges and just eat quality food as it suits and is available to you.
20
Cattle are not fattened with fat; they are fattened with carbs (grain).
In spite of exercising regularly and intensely, I gained a few extra lbs over the years and simply could not lose them no matter how hard I worked out. I do not drink sodas, barely eat sugar or artificial sweeteners, I do eat lots of salads - without dressings (just a few tsps of olive oil and vinegar).
Eventually I tried the ketogenic diet (very few carbs, some coconut oil, vegetables and protein). I lost about 1.5 pounds per week. 30 lbs total.
Then, I made some delicious bread, "Just" one plate of pasta here and there.
15 of the 30 lbs returned.
I started the ketogenic diet again. Started losing again.
When I eat carbs - I gain weight in spite of intense, 2 hour workouts 2x/week plus lifting weights and bicycling.
"Of Mice and Men" - Men gain weight eating carbs; mice don't.
68
@Ed Watt
Thanks for your anecdote. It is a micro of the macro. And while obesity is both individual and social and has complex causes, processed and manufactured food with corn sugar is a major component in explaining our portly preoccupations.
If we would look at photos of Americans in the 1950s and earlier, we would observe far less obesity. After Fidel Castro gained power, a Cuban cane sugar embargo was initiated in 1960, cutting cane sugar consumption in the U.S. significantly. Congress followed by subsidizing corn heavily and processed food producers, soft drink makers, and all Americans consumers added a far greater quantity of corn sugar to their way of life. That and other food additives used by Big Ag have contributed to our national obesity since the 1970s and 80s (check photos).
My nutritionist convinced me of a major cause of our collective overweight by asking this question: why are pigs and cattle fed corn? I quickly answered: "Too fatten them up." Q.E.D.
9
@edwatts Same story here. Gym did nothing except exhaust me. Keto changed my waist line and A1c! People think it’s difficult but it’s not. Some protein, good fats, veggies. You stay full and not hangry from your blood sugar bouncing around. Been on keto almost two years and no weight gain back or surging A1c and blood numbers excellent.
7
Just too bad the study left out the effect of high-fructose con syrup, HFCS, the most common used sugar in industrial food, hence the most consumed in the U.S. https://www.medicaldaily.com/high-fructose-corn-syrup-more-harmful-sucro...
6
Utterly confused.
“It looks like consuming high-fat diets, if they aren’t extremely high fat, leads to weight gain, if you are a mouse,”
Assume I am a mouse.
So, if I am consuming a high-fat diet, I should not stop midway: I should eat more and more so in effect I am consuming an extremely high-fat diet. In this case, I will not gain weight.
Whoa!
12
so...we may concluded that :
1. Female mice and their off-spring don't merit attention.
Seriously. I breast fed my children and many more children in Southern California's NICUs. Fat and more fat was the essence. This alone should tell everyone with any scientific leaning that they should be studying the necessity of fats in early childhood development.
We are not the goal of mother nature. We are the success stories whenever we have lived long enough to breed and successfully raise the next generation to breed more. So weight is a fashion statement. You're only supposed to live long enough to breed. That's the rule.
Why don't they test the female mice? Because they are the breeders and being the breeders means they have a multitude of variables that are more difficult to document and record.
Testing males of any mammalian species must really simplify matters. Males make sperm, eat, then die. Females must harbor the blastocysts long enough for them to become viable and then care for their offspring until the offspring is old enough to procreate and repeat the cycle.
Human kind broke free of that cycle only because males helped carry the load of raising their offspring. It was what we call love, empathy, compassion.
So why don't they include female mammals in their studies?
Because female present too many variables.
20
Excellent
1
It might be interesting to compare the digestive system of a rat to the digestive system of a human. Rats don’t have gall bladders, and therefore aren’t designed to handle as much fat as humans. Furthermore, rats have better intestinal capability for breaking down plant material into nutrients. The low-fat vegetarian diet is much more suited to the rat than the human. For decent scientific rigor, I would expect the scientists who did this study to include the rat versus human digestive system differences in their discussion of results.
13
With the world In such turmoil it heartening to know we are on the way to better insights into the mouse obesity problem!
34
Hundreds of mice in the study but you could only "hope" to test female mice some other time? Researchers need to stop focusing on only male creatures. Hello, half the world is female.
15
Calories do count. The relatively high fat diet the mice ate contained the most calories. Fats are the most most calorie dense than carbs and proteins. 9vs 4 and 4.
Growing up I was obese, meat 6 out of 7days. Hi fat mayo, cream cheese, butter, sour cream, and desert most nights. Now I'm lean, fit, healthy.
1500-1800 calories daily, low fat, high complex carbs, moderate protein.
3
My anecdote: after menopause I easily lost 35 lbs. by cutting out sugar and refined carbohydrates, eating moderate amounts of protein (50-70 grams daily), and eating up to 80 grams of fat daily, mostly in the form of nuts, seeds, and olive oil. My HDL is 79, LDL went from 120 to 110. Triglycerides are in the 70’s. A1c is 5.2, insulin is low. I am not a large person, so I don’t need that many calories - about 1400 daily, with more added on days I work out. I am never hungry and my food cravings have vanished. Fat is not the enemy.
112
@Kat... I did the same thing and yes, I also have lost 15 lbs over the past 6 months, right after menopause. All it took was removal of simple carbs like pasta and bread, daily consumption of at least 50-60g protein daily and a good 30 min uphill walk every day. Also, it’s not just any old protein intake that matters: I eat a lot of hard boiled eggs which only measure 7g protein each, but that protein is far more digestible and hence bioavailable than say the 20g protein reported in my snack bar!
7
@Kat This is heartening! Because I have to say that during perimenopause, nothing works. Hormones are powerful and incomprehensible. I eat a low starch low sugar diet (no starch in the day, small serving of quinoa or sweet potato at dinner) lean protein, vegetables and (measured) olive oil or avocado in the day, and weight won't budge! No bread, no pasta, no cereal. I do eat a bit of very dark chocolate because I am human. I wonder if the mice had that option :)
1
@Kat Bless you, Kat, for offering some hope. I'm in perimenopause and gaining weight despite rigid healthy diet and regular and vigorous exercise. There is light after menopause apparently!
1
I have been on a ketogenic diet for 18 mos. and have lost 13 pds.
My numbers are excellent and I feel in less pain (I have arthritis).
the only sugar I get is from berries and red wine. I question this study because
I think sugar and white carbohydrates are the cause of much weight
gain.
31
Breaking news. Different people process different foods differently. This is largely due to the needs of your body. Fats are mostly used for long term energy storage. Sugars are for short term energy usage. If you are someone who is highly active, and doesn’t eat regularly, fats are your friend. If you are largely sedentary and eat frequently fats can quickly be your enemy. Adding to that, if you are more sedentary, sugars can be stored as fat, making them your enemy too. Every person has to strike their own balance between diet and activity level. It’s really not a mystery.
14
I'm interested in who funded the study? Coca Cola? U.S. Sugar? After reading the book "The Case Against Sugar", I learned that the sugar industry often makes fat the bad actor. It is clear that sugar is a major contributor towards inflammation and inflammatory disease causes many of our ailments. In this "study" there is no differentiation between the different kinds of fats. I actually lost weight when I started eating more fat (avocado, coconut oil) and cutting out all sugar, other than fresh fruit.
103
@theconstantgardener
I swear I was thinking the same thing.
5
@theconstantgardener You bring up an interesting point. The US NIH has never funded this type of nutrition study because the US NIH really doesn't like this type of study. Here is the funding statement from the paper: The study was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Program (XDB13030100), the 1000 Talents program, and a Wolfson merit award to J.R.S., and by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (31570409) and funds from Guangdong Academy of Sciences (2017GDASCX-0107) to Q.L.
2
I hope the study provides more detail than this article. Having read the article twice, I am at a loss to know exactly what the study says I should be avoiding, of the 29 different diets that were assessed.
24
@HJB: Of course the study will contain more detail than this article - it's longer!
The overfocus on macronutrient ratios is pointless. People in different cultures, climates and eras have thrived while eating wildly differing macronutrient ratios. Humans are very adaptable in that way (mice too, which is what makes them such successful pests -- they eat everything humans eat. Those commenters who have been saying mice are grass-eating herbivores are incorrect.) There's no macronutrient ratio that's going to be the magic key to prevent obesity.
9
@TT: I agree with you that there is no magic bullet. However, pointing out that the natural diet of mice in the wild is low-fat herbivore is NOT saying that there's a macro-nutrient ratio that that's the key to preventing obesity.
1
Push -ups are important, but push-aways (push yourself away from the table when you have eaten the minimum amount, no need to be "full") are more important.
10
This is a really poorly written article that appears not to have read the original study, nor was the original study well designed to demonstrate the impact of macronutrient distribution.
Here's how you test whether a particular macronutrient affects weight loss: all the mice eat the same number of calories, but from different calorie sources (carbs, protein, fat). This was not the case here. The mice ate diets with different compositions, which *of course* would lead to great consumption of calories for mice on the high fat diets since fat has more calories per gram than protein or carbs do.
This ilustrates nothing other than the already well-known maximum that what matters is calories in/calories out.
62
So, we (men) can all be drinking big gulp sized sugary soft drinks with impunity? That can't be right.
30
Burn more calories than you take in
next question
11
You’re treating a chemical process like a math equation. If it were just in/out, then metabolism would mean nothing
12
@W Saint
Ever heard of Cortisol and Insulin. Try to lose weight when those 2 are high.
7
@W Saint
You need to do a bit more research, WSaint, and get out of the 1950's.
Hormonal balance is the key to weight loss or gain. Eating a diet of unrefined carbs will sure;y unbalance hormones because in reality they are not food, they are just tasty poison, much like alcohol. Your body will react by putting on the pounds because it is not getting the nutrition, therefore it believes you are starving and will turn anything into fat; it goes into survival mode. Your fight or flight response (adrenaline and cortisol) will become extremely unbalanced.
Research and anecdotal evidence shows that the old theory of burn more calories than you eat is just not true.
4
Reading the Times's coverage of obesity science makes my head spin. As others have noted, the message seems to change on a weekly basis. It's also disturbing that the article never mentions the obvious point raised by many commenters: mice are herbivores and might be expected to respond to fat and protein differently than people. What do the study's authors say about this?
All this leaves me wondering why it is so impossible to conduct a good study of humans in the real world. I get that you can't stuff people with cheetos and watch them die while you casually take notes on your clipboard, but isn't there some way to do a better job of observing people's real world behavior other than just asking them to try to remember what they ate? Isn't there an app that you could use to take a picture of your food that would automatically estimate its nutritional content? Wouldn't the cost of such a study pale in comparison to the scale of the problem?
83
@Alex - Trust me, LOTS of people wish there was such an app that could estimate nutritional content painlessly! Memory is unreliable on its own, and recall especially so. I spent years logging calories manually on LoseIt! and if I didn't do it within two days, I'd forget the details. And due to the variations in food as an inconsistent biological product, you'll always be off by around +/- 200 Cal/day.
Right now the closest thing to what you're envisioning is a service where you send photos of foods to trained nutritionists. I've spoken to machine learning experts about this exact problem, and the issue is that images don't capture volume well, and also fail to capture the macronutrient breakdown (chemical sensing required), which can vary widely across lots, batches, crops, etc for what appear to be the same food.
3
I like your idea for a real-life study.
But I like that your comment made me laugh most of all!
1
@Alex People lie.
Eat moderately of everything when you're hungry, stop when you're full and leave those poor mice alone!
41
Overeating causes obesity. Lack of exercise causes heart problems.
Signed, a fat guy who, after 50 years, finally figured out that I had to track every single bite, deny myself bad pre-processed food and anything white, get off my duff, and lost 125 pounds.
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@Mtnman1963: Congratulations! I hope you feel amazing. That’s quite an accomplishment.
10
@Mtnman1963
Interesting, because after being fat for many years, I effortlessly lost weight by getting quality sleep, and changing my diet to moderate fat and protein, high veggie and no processed food. Did not exercise, although now that I've lost a lot of weight I do walk every day. I never tracked one bit of food, cheated a lot, and during the last 16 months, was experiencing a high level of stress, due to my husband's illness.
So not every weight loss regimen is for everyone, just as not every diet is the same for everyone.
10
@Mtnman1963 Good job.
7
I'm guessing the high fat diet for the mice which consists of 80% fat & the rest carbs and such = the common late 20th century human diet of big Macs with obligatory bacon, fries and the carbs of that bun.
Look around everybody, there sure are a lot more fat folks around these last few decades. Human kibble is that bacon. Cheap, plentiful carefully processed to balance crunch, salt, savory and loaded with, you guessed it, Fat.
Common diner food repeats this formula. The most ordered breakfast is greasy eggs, bacon, sausage and home fries. Great start to the day!
To me, this study, nails it!
BTW, mice in the wild, are omnivores. They eat a balance of nuts, seeds, fruits, insects and carrion. Trust me - one of their favorite food is peanut butter. They also like pet food kibble. So lock them up with easy to consume addictive foods, you've got fat mice. Does that remind you of anyone?
5
@Wilcoworld
I would suggest you research the ketogenic diet, which has been around for many years, and has successfully treated alzheimer's patients and now is become popular because it reduces weight, balances cholesterol, reduces blood pressure and a host of other health markers.
That diner breakfast, btw, the bacon, sausage and eggs are not the problem, the toast and potatoes are. However, and it's a big however, bacon and sausage taken from pigs that are fed a diet of grain (corn) ARE the culprit. The same with eggs, if chickens are fed mostly corn, and are not allowed outside in the sunshine, and allowed to peck, the eggs will be of poor quality.
Eating a breakfast of good quality eggs and bacon, sans the potatoes and toast, is way more healthy than a breakfast of wheaties, or corn pops, or pop tarts, etc.
Take ALL grain out of the equation and you will see a very healthy population.
4
@Lila thank you for your feedback. The lovely illustration accompanying this feature is a supersize mouse burger. Suggesting what makes us fat.
The diner breakfast is loaded with lard including the home fries. Then butter added for good measure on toast, eggs, whatever. The carbs are supporting characters. The fats are the main event. It's funny that you bring up pop tarts as an alternate breakfast. These 'foods' are junk foods popular in the 60's when fast food burger joints were on their way to blanket neighborhoods with their presence. No coincidence that soon after, heavyweight people became the norm.
To force your body into ketogenesis is an extreme measure with unhealthy side effects.
Whole grain carbs are healthy carbs. They provide the fiber, vegetable proteins, energy source in a balanced diet. High quality vegetable oils like olive oil provide the fats your body needs without the toxins of processed meats. WHO issued a warning about this a few years ago. It's no wonder that colon cancer continues to rise including among young people. This is factual. No fancy lab mice required.
If we observe our pets engorging on highly processed low grade kibble, they become fat and ill quickly. That kibble is engineered to be addictive. High in rendered cheap fats and corn as filler. These are artificial 'foods' and the consequences are right before us.
1
I seriously hope anyone reading this does not read that eating sugar will keep you thin (+ healthy). It will not.
We are not mice.
Sugar is poison.
22
it's very difficult and expensive to run controlled dietary experiments on humans. You have to provide all their food and make sure they don't cheat. Maybe they can use prisoners someday? Might improve their health. Certainly would be a way to actually perform a controlled experiment.
3
@susan : If they would use this as an excuse to feed prisoners healthy, humane food -- with additional funding coming from research grants to actually pay for healthier food for prisoners -- that would be amazing.
I think everyone knows the junk they are currently feeding to prisoners is toxic to human health, both physically and mentally.
Imagine if they could try different healthy diets (minimally processed, little to no sugar, nothing white). Then they could get some really good data. Not to mention better food for prisoners.
3
This should be titled "Which Kinds of Food Make MICE Fat".
And I am not at all interested in this topic.
9
@lkos so why did (do) you stay?
2
“It looks like consuming high-fat diets, if they aren’t extremely low carb, leads to weight gain, if you are a mouse,”
3
@elJuez Gee, didn't I just read that somewhere?
4
Eat food, way too much, mostly walnuts.
9
Wait until those poor mice get tested with piles of salt in added to their high-fat diets.
They'll be as round as the little kids you see eating nothing but a big plate of French fries for lunch in restaurants.
4
Why do we need to retread this same territory about the types of food that make you fat? It's absurd, especially when there is no mention of the AMOUNT of food consumed, be it in rats or humans. American are fatter because we eat more than most population, period. The answer to weight loss and maintenance is very simple; eat less and exercise more.
5
@Ned
Nutritional quality feeds back on satiation, which in turn affects the _amount_ of food consumed later in the day.
1
So nothing makes you fat (if you're a mouse) other than a diet consisting of a particular percentage of fat. Eat a higher percentage and you will remain thin; eat a lower percentage and you will remain thin. Only within that band do you get fat.
If you're a mouse.
It sounds to me like they haven't identified the causes of our weight problem. Lack of exercise? Maybe. But I tend to blame our chemical and artificial food environment mostly. The antibiotics (used to fatten animals for slaughter), glyphosate, BPA's, pesticides, hormones, artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, particulate air pollution, etc. all showing up in our environment and food must be having some impact--and I can't imagine it's good.
I also suspect that excess sugar, while it might not make rats fat, has other adverse health consequences.
I can't prove a lot of that, but until these things can be proven safe, it is probably prudent to minimize our exposure to them.
9
I realize rodents are easily acquired study subjects, but we've got to stop using them as models in metabolic and dietary research.
Rodents are herbivores, in nature they eat a lot of grasses and seeds (i.e. their diets by default should be carbohydrate and fiber heavy). Eating diets high in fat or protein are unnatural, and unsurprisingly the higher calorie/gram high-fat diet will produce fatter mice faster. Humans, on the other hand, are naturally omnivorous and our bodies are tuned to react differently to the same carb/fat/protein proportions in a diet than a mouse would. Even among human populations some are far better able to tolerate large amounts of fat and protein than others (e.g. native inhabitants of very cold climates).
It's obviously impossible (and in some cases unethical) to control human diets in long-term studies to untangle other positive/negative lifestyle factors from diet when it comes to weight, but we know enough to spot the healthy trends: copious and varied whole vegetable and grain consumption and limited processed/refined food. Everything else is lost in the noise.
16
@TMBM But, you must admit, the rest of our population isn't as smart as you and may need to be reminded.
@TMBM yep! exactly what I was thinking. Also they're prey animals and might need more readily accessible energy to escape from threats than those higher up on the food chain?
These articles make it seem like we're still trying to figure out how it is that people fall out of shape.
Diet discipline and exercise.
Diet discipline and exercise.
Diet discipline and exercise.
I say "diet discipline" because I don't want to give people the impression that it's a certain type of food that will help you stay healthy. What helps is eating in a disciplined fashion.
Exercise is unalloyed - just get out there and start moving.
Yes, every human is different - but not so different that we don't share the majority of traits. If people we as different as some would suggest, medical schools wouldn't exist.
3
@Chris"If people we as different as some would suggest, medical schools wouldn't exist." SAY WHAT??
Perhaps there would be less direct contradiction of the results if there were more commenters who had read the study. (Sadly that applies to many other things as well, including the U.S. dietary guidelines.)
It is worth reading. Here it is in Cell Metabolism:
https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/pdfExtended/S1550-4131(18)30392-9
While these findings are nothing new, this study is important because of its scope and duration.
6
@childofsol
What are the ingredients in the mouse chow?
What kind of diet(s) are mice adapted to eat?
This article did not say if there were significant differences in the micronutrients of these diets. My humble theory is that when our diets contain deficits of essential nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids and fatty acids, or even if our diets are chronically suboptimal for key nutrients, then we may feel an urge to overeat to make up for our nutritional deficit. Our bodies may be crying for better nutrition, and that cry make look to us like hunger.
4
McDonald's Burger King, and the other fast food outlets figured this out long ago, and weaponized their menus to get us addicted.
This is just what the tobacco industry did with nicotine. It took decades to force them to admit it, and that will be true of the fast food industry, too.
12
@MLChadwick Corporations are always maximizing the efficiency of making money off of idiots. Facebook anyone?
4
@MLChadwick Yes, indeed.
"Would you like fries with that?"
(credit: Super-size Me)
Interestingly, this article fails to mention the effect of glyphosate, found in Roundup, on our microbiome, and thus on our weight. Studies in France, for example, clearly indicate that glyphosate is a factor in the development of obesity. Since it's found in most of our food--in bread, in vegetables and in meat (animals fed on glyphosate-saturated feed), it's a strong possibility that it affects our weight.
Monsanto--now Bayer--reaps enormous profits from Roundup, and has challenged American researchers who have found that glyphosate does impact weight. Other countries, though, have provided credible evidence that glyphosate is a major factor in weight gain.
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@Elizabeth Bennett
There are no reliable peer-reviewed studies that say any such thing. As always, there are a couple of researchers publishing things in non peer-reviewed journals that lead their peers to assess them as:
"We found that these authors inappropriately employ a deductive reasoning approach based on syllogism. We found that their conclusions are not supported by the available scientific evidence. Thus, the mechanisms and vast range of conditions proposed to result from glyphosate toxicity presented by Samsel and Seneff in their commentaries are at best unsubstantiated theories, speculations, or simply incorrect."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5705608/
3
The study does not really talk about the composition of the food just macro percentages. It would be more informative to understand this. Other studies have included diets where the fat used would be considered "unhealthy" as understood by nutrition authorities. Use of highly processed fats have shown to be problematic and associated with insulin resistance and weight gain.
There are also studies (albeit short-term) in humans where the opposite findings are indicated - High fat - more weight loss. Let's face it - we're not mice.
9
@Jim Note that the mice on a "Super" high fat diet, over 60% fat, did not gain weight.
The researchers noted that "Extreme" high fat diets, which would include a Ketogenic diet, won't lead to weight gain. It's the person eating the fatty burger with the bun full of carbs that gets fat.
So I think this suggests going Keto, or go with a low fat Mediterranean diet, but the middle is the danger zone.
13
@Kenneth
The finding of this and several other studies over the last few decades, is that a high percentage of the fat in the diet leads to increased hedonic eating. Fat tastes good, and habitual consumption leads to a feedback loop wherein neurochemistry is altered to favor more fat consumption. One has to stretch logic into a pretzel shape to implicate carbohydrates here.
@childofsol
Interesting comment! I have found in my n=1 self-experimentation that what you say here is true ONLY UNTIL I get the carbs almost to zero. The rat experiment on which this Reynolds article is based seems to agree: Get the carbs low enough, which necessarily also means "super" high fat (assuming protein healthy limits are not exceeded), and the fat feedback loop you hypothesize disappears. Can you explain this?
With about 40 % of our population willing to eat enough calories to be obese why not just have them journal what they eat and when they eat it? That is a pretty big research group. Leave out the mice, no need for ethical considerations when the public does the over eating and chooses bad foods without prompting.
8
@georgiadem
I would argue that the mice probably about just as reliable. The reason being that while some would be honest, people who engage in unhealthy activities are often not honest with themselves about the the extent of their unhealthy activities. And even more so when they have to share the date with others.
3
Anyone who has looked at obesity knows where the problems lie and much of it revolves around where things like sugar and empty carbs are coming into the diet, along with diets loaded with fatty, cheap protein (meat), and a large part of this is the packaged food industry backed up by farm subsidies that literally are making some fortunes and making people sick. Dr. Heyman from the Cleveland Clinic was speaking on PBS the other day, and he pointed out 99% of farm subsidies goes to three things, corn, wheat and soybeans. None of them in of itself is unhealthy, the problem is what they are being used for. Because of huge subsidies, for example, high fructose corn syrup is dirt cheap, much cheaper than cane sugar or any other kind. Because it is so cheap, soda prices are way cheaper now, and h f c is used in a ton of processed foods. Corn is okay, but because subsidies make it cheap (and profitable), cattle is force fed corn which leads to fatty, unhealthy meat that is really cheap, so restaurants and fast food have supersized things, and fast food is now dirt cheap. Soy is mostly used as soy oil, which is used in a ton of processed foods; cheap wheat leads to cheap, processed flour, that is used in a ton of processed foods...and it shows, 40 years ago 15% of the population was obese, today it is 40, and that rise correlates to the rise of packaged foods and the use of these products. This study isn't relevant because it is isolating out things, not looking at the whole.
26
@bill d Carbs, carbs, carbs. You're right. It's elaly not the fat. I don't give this piece much credence.
As descentants of hunters/gatherers, we are unfortunately not meant to eat or process refined sugar and flour products and we are slaves to our bodies that were designed to store fat because a long time ago we didn't know when our next meal would be.
7
@John E.
The domestication of grain I believe began about the 4th millenium in the Ancient Near East. Native Americans had their corn. (And there would have been honey, possibly maple syrup, fruit.) Man is an omnivore... which is how the homo not so sapiens managed to overrun the planet Earth.!!
The best part of this is that "scientists hope to include females." Whenever there is a human study of all men (par for the course) the excuse is, "it's too expensive to include women [because they are so darned complicated]." But with mice? Geez. The study design lost credibility for me at this point. How hard is it to include some female mice? Really, is it that expensive to feed twice as many mice the same diet, measure the responses and report by gender?
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@Jean Campbell There have been a number of nutrition studies that have focused exclusively on women. Interestingly, they show the same thing. Women who reduced the fat in their diet lost weight. A common comment was "I wish I had known about this a long time ago." Ultimately, I don't think we really need these studies. Eat real food, that which looks like you could grow it in a garden, gather it from the woods, catch it with a hook, or bring it home from a hunt. If it comes in a box, a bag, a bottle, a can, or came from a factory, stop eating it. Stay away from processed foods: baked goods, sugary foods, vegetable oils (is corn oily?) and all those items that make up 70% to 80% of the supermarket. Go all in on vegetables, some fruit, nuts, legumes, monosaturated fats and healthy, unprocessed meats. We really don't need scientists to tell us these things; many of our grandmothers could have told us the same.
4
@Jean Campbell Running a study with 29 different diets in hundreds of mice would cost tens of thousands of dollars; more depending upon how many gene/protein measurements are performed at the conclusion of the study. If run at a contract research organization it could easily surpass $100K. So, yes it would be quite expensive to double the size of the experiment. Incidentally, female mice have more hormonal variations because of the estrus cycle, so ideally a scientist would need more female mice to answer the same question (more variability means you need a bigger sample size) increasing the cost even more. I've worked in research for over 20 years. I don't believe this is a poorly designed study. It's not always possible to answer every question in a single experiment.
3
In other news, fast food companies are now launching a line of fatty kibble after hearing that it made mice happy. Oh, wait, they already sell that under the name potato chips.
15
@Ben McDonalds coined the Happy Meal long ago.
1
Calories in. Calories out. If there is an imbalance, you either get fat or you don't.
7
@Mary Crain
If only that were the full story. It has also been proven that not all calories are equal. Some calories tend to pass through your digestive tract with out being fully used by your body and some calories sit in your digestive tract for extend periods of time and consumed by your body relatively slowly. But in general terms you are correct.
5
@Mary Crain But since there's no accurate way to measure either calories in or calories out, the calories in/calories out syllogism isn't really very useful.
How many are absorbed vs. excreted? How efficiently are they absorbed? Calories in food are measured by burning the food to determine how much heat is generated; that's not how humans, or mice, use food.
As respects calories out, one would have to know how much work was done and how efficient the muscles doing that work are as well as how much energy is spent maintaining temperature, respiration, and other body requirements. Even stress may enhance or hamper the burning of calories.
4
totally wrong. yes starvation will make you thin, but metabolism is much more complex than that
3
What kinds of fat? And were the fats the sort a mouse would normally eat? Though the bit about very high fat is confounding.
2
@Miriam Warner
It's actually not confounding; it just wasn't explained. It almost certainly has to do with the fact that a very high fat, low carbohydrate diet is a ketogenic diet, which is metabolically quite different from any other type of diet. This was an "Atkins" diet for mice.
4
I am increasingly displeased with the health related articles in the NY Times, which are always short on detail and written in a rather amateur fashion. It's never more than "scientists did this, and then this happened." Causation rather than correlation is incorrectly assumed. And it leaves us readers with too many unanswered questions and much confusion. One week fat is good because it keeps you sated; the next week it's bad. Sugar is evil, no wait it's not. People are just like mice, except when they're not. So what are you telling us?
706
@vmur
Thank you for this post, I strongly agree. I look to NYT for 80+% of my news (I recently started the Post), but their health and diet articles are really poor quality. "Scientists did this, and then this happened." is exactly right. How about raising the bar for this kind of article? Give them the same standards as an article about US Politics
36
I think the problem is not w/the NYT, but with nutrition science
12
@vmur They are telling you to eat a healthy, balanced diet, low in fat but moderate amounts of everything else.
So have that dessert once in a while but always eat your veggies. This is not rocket science. And try to exercise once in a while, or at least walk to where you're going instead of hailing the cab
9
This article ends abruptly. How about a definition of "high fat" diet, how about a discussion of the difference between "high fat" and "extremely high fat," and how about more elucidation as to what this might mean for humans?
43
The problem with rodents as a model is they have a robust capacity for lipgenesis (new synthesis of fat) that is quite different from humans. As a result rodent models for obesity almost never translate to humans.
William Evans, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Human Nutrition, University of California Berkeley
520
@William Evans The nutritional requirements of mice are similar to those of humans in some respects but not consumption of fats. This is extremely important and should have been mentioned in the article. If the authors of the study did not mention it they are culpable.
14
@William Evans This should have been the opening and closing paragraphs of the article. Or even better, hold the article till a better one comes along.
9
@William Evans wow, thanks. This is incredibly important information. I was thinking about going cold turkey on consuming fat.
10
Dietary fat does not cause the pancreas to release insulin—carbohydrates and sugars do. And insulin is a necessary trigger for fat cell growth. Carbs have a lot more to do with obesity than dietary fat does.
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@Todd... the whole purpose of carb-stimulated pancreatic insulin release is to convert those ingested carbs into fat, which is obviously unnecessary when you’re ingesting something already composed of fat.
1
I don't really like to write negative comments BUT - this article, and the study it is based on, is wildly misleading and inaccurate for human beings. Is the "US' in the title targeted to Mice or Humans? What is the NYT mice readership?? If the mice eat 60% fat they gain weight but over 60% fat they do not gain wieght!? Really, who would ever think of feeding their pet mouse 60% fat? Certainly not this reader! I suspect that if this study was presented to the UN that there would be "muffled laughter".
21
This study completely supports the low carb / "paleo" theory of nutrition. The study "highlight" states: "Adiposity increased with increasing fat content to 60% but thereafter declined."
This means that the mice who gained the most weight were eating a diet of 60% fat and 40% carbohydrate. That's a massive amount of carbs, and this result matches what is already known about a large intake of carbs/sugars, which is that the carbs spike insulin response, which in turn drives ALL types of calories (fat, carb) into fat storage).
10
@JJ Forty percent carbs doesn't sound so massive to me. I'm sure that if you carefully logged your food intake for a few days and analyzed the content through some of the online tools, your diet would probably contain that or more. Additionally, all that fat would dramatically reduce the absorption rate of the carbohydrates, significantly reducing any spike in blood sugar levels and associated insulin response.
@JJ
Hopefully those mice eating 60% fat were also provided with some protein. I don't think we can just assume that the entirety of the other 40% of their diet was carbs.
1
I wondered how much of the food the mice ate and at what rate. Could it be that they liked that moderate-fat diet, and ate more of it?
I'm not sure what mice eat in the wild (and were they wild-type mice?) I suspect that sugar isn't a big part of that diet. Do they eat a lot of nuts? That would be reasonable.
I haven't read the paper, but if it didn't record how much food the mice consumed in terms of calories per day (a function of the portion that they didn't leave behind and its nutrient content) I would have trouble seeing its significance.
4
The headline, "Which Kinds of Foods Make us Fat," is misleading.
We are not mice. Mice are herbivores, while we are omnivores. This experiment was the equivalent of feeding a lion oats and hay, or a horse raw meat.
As anyone who has lost weight on a low-carb diet can tell you, a fatty diet will not make a human being fat if the fat isn't accompanied by carbohydrates, because it suppresses appetite. And we know that the obesity epidemic is in practice a consequence of carb consumption, as according to Department of Agriculture figures, levels of fat and protein in the American diet have not increased, while levels of carb consumption have.
26
@Josh Hill
I would be careful about throwing around terms like "carbs", not all carbs are the same. The real cause of problems are the simple (processed) carbs a lot of people are eating, especially sugars like High Fructose corn syrup that are in so many processed foods, along with the crappy white flour that makes up the basis of the packaged breads out there, or the crappy hamburger buns at Mickey D's and the like. Complex carbs, like whole grains, vegetables, beans, do not cause the problems simple ones do. Fruits contain simple sugars, but if eaten as fruit (instead of juice) have fiber that ameliorates the effects of the simple sugards.
as far as consumption of protein, it is up, for example the early puberty many girls are experiencing these days is at least partially the result of their diet being higher in protein, and all you need to do is look at portions in restaurants, where the trend (in the most obese places especially) is large portions of cheap, fatty meat. Likewise, the amount of fat people eating is up, because the processed foods they eat are loaded with them, especially soy oil that you find in breads and such as filler, along with HFC and crappy flour, because they are cheap.
It is ironic you cite the D of A, they are one of the chief culprits. 99% of the farm subsidies go to corn, wheat and soy farming, that has led to hfc being used as a filler, soybean oil in foods you wouldn't expect, hfc as sweetener and cheap fatty meat fed on corn.
2
...”if you’re a mouse” being the key point here. No, we can’t perform such experiments on humans. But just because we can do so on mice doesn’t mean much of anything for us. Not least of all because humans are more complicate. (Were the mice subjected to mouse-years of misleading & manipulative food advertisements?) This article perpetuates the myth that fat will make you fat. That’s a human myth. Perhaps not a mouse myth.
7
One would have to read the original paper to see if the information conveyed was this vague. I am left with more questions than answers.
What the composition of the fats was is a question mark as others have pointed out. Let's say it was a mixture of all fats, mono, poly and sat fats, what was the composition of the mixture? What kind of protein? The only sure thing was sucrose. who were the mice who became obese, were they male or female, young or old? What about the others in the same diet who did not become obese? Why were they processing differently. In the high fat diets what did they fill the rest of the diet with, carbs or protein, or a mixture? Were all mice being given carbs? After reading this not only am I unhappy with the way science is conveyed but dismayed to think that the Nytimes would print such a poorly understood article.
I have not read the link to the paper, but from the little conveyed here, it seems to be the most pointless study. Quantity of experimental sets does not mean great results. If this article is an indication of how their paper is perceived, they're ther need to write with more clarity or they need to go back to the lab and design a simpler experiment with fewer parameters to answer a better question than what tickles the opioid pathway to make certain mice anxious enough to gorge.
2
Gretchen, why do you ignore carbs as the pivotal cause? By definition, high-fat is low-carb. “Super” high-fat subjects experienced no weight gain; i.e., super-low-carb rats. “Only fat made them fat.” Really? In fact, carbs made them fat, as proven by the super-high-fat rats’ success. Zero-carb is the way of the future! Thank you taking on this important topic.
11
Mice aren’t humans. It has already been shown that sugar and starchy food cause obesity and metabolic syndrome in humans.
6
I have to concur with these findings. I've been actively dieting, having lost 25 pounds since last July using an app that allows me to record food, count calories and keep an accurate graph of my daily habits. So, for now, i'm my own human lab rat. And what I noticed, the one true setback (and this is after gorging on about anything on during my cheat days), it was a double serving of creme brûlée that actually truly added fat back to my body. All other meals that included extremes in other macronutrients didn't do this. They may have added extra water for a day or two, like high protein diets demand extra water while digesting. But it was nothing like the fat.
4
Hey guess what? Creme brûlée is mostly sugar.
13
@Gusting
Creme brulee (the name is French for "Burnt Cream" is NOT "mostly sugar." 75% of the calories in creme brulee comes from fat, and on a gram basis, a serving of creme brulee has twice as much fat as sugar.
https://www.nutritionix.com/i/nutritionix/creme-brulee-1-ramekin/5665db4...
Reporting studies like this isn't helpful, I can immediately see the soda and candy industry saying "See, sugar doesn't cause obesity", when this study likely has zero relevance to human beings, the same way that the studies about saturated fat and dietary cholesterol having nothing to do with heart disease have problems with them, in that the way they are done may not reflect the real world. Sugars in humans cause a glycemic reaction that causes them to put on body fat, which in turn blocks the insulin response and later leads to type II diabetes (any body fat does that).
The real guilty party is processed and fast food, and if you look globally it becomes obvious. Places that had otherwise healthy diets (India, China, Meditteranean places) are facing a huge surge in obesity, and you can trace that to the food industry (Nestle et al) going in there and created processed versions of their own cuisine, along with western fast food. You chart the rise of these companies growth in the markets, and it is directly on a line with obesity rates.
There is no one perfect way to eat, but the one thing that stands out is that processed foods based on cheap ingredients is a killer; make meals that are homemade, without the sugars and fillers and fat found in processed food, that have a reasonable balance between things, and you do well. A diet loaded with sugar or high fat may not produce obesity in mice, but mice also live a short time....
7
Did any of the obese mice experience a recent breakup or job-loss? Might be relevant.
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@stan continople Too much....
So much for the Ketogenic diet to prevent obesity. Too bad they ended the study on weight gain and not weight loss.
I don't know if there's any way to prevent weight gain among human consumers simply because of the overwhelming abundance and variety of tasty food choices.
I'd like a mouse model grocery store with all kinds of Kandy Korn, Cheetohs, Pizza Bites, and Kale of course. Compare that to a single source of standard lab mouse chow. The abundance of selection would have the main. The minutia of caloric composition is secondary to the quantity.
We consume too much. Clusters of big box stores dot every major road. Online consumption outstrips online news. The world caters to our tastes and fickle ideas about what's healthy. We buy too much stuff we don't need, that goes double for food. We create our trade deficits with our habits, not our trade deals.
How do we address the consumer society that values the market above all other freedoms? How do we come to terms with national gluttony? The simple answer must come from the heart and the home.
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@Larkspur Keto is over 60% fat, like 75% is typical. The study says that over 60% fat the mice didn't gain weight.
Keto works if there is an extremely large amount of calories from fat, but if it's a larger than usual amount of fat and lots of carbohydrates, you have a disaster on your hands. A hamburger or fried chicken or potato chips are full of fat and carbohydrates. Our body craves these things together, and can't stop eating them.
So low fat diets work, but so do keto ones. What doesn't is the standard American diet with large amounts of fat and carbohydrates together.
2
So they were put on one of dozens of "diets," zero of which were calorie-restricted? it was just a test of what ratio of macronutrients would make a dumb animal with no self control obese the fastest, if it could eat to its little heart's content?
How very relevant to Americans, I guess.
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@Alex
Excellent point, because when it comes to food, we are dumb animals.
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@Alex
No animal on its native diet overeats to the point of disability or disease, to do so would be profoundly maladaptive.
Humans in the past maintained stable weights without any special self control.
Were they all fed the same amount of calories?
2
With nutrition there likely isn't any one answer, people tend to be different, but the real problem is found in studies like this, that attempt to generalize based on a lot of assumptions (for example, that mice are the same as human beings for everything). For example, it is well known that if you eat a very high fat diet (keto diet aka atkins) that the body produces ketones that causes the person to shed fat; what isn't talked about are the long term consequences of that kind of diet, what the fats do to you long term with things like cancer or heart disease, or whether it even works past a certain point. You can get the same kind of results from steady fasting, eating one meal a day and eating a low fat diet but not limiting how much you eat, and evidence is that has the same ketogenic affect but without the consequences.
The real problem is that the kind of studies we need, which would involve groups of people over the long term, are difficult and expensive, it would involve them reporting what they eat normally, and seeing what happens....and who will pay for it? The government won't, because likely it will show their food policy is a disaster, that the 99% of farm subsidies that go to wheat, corn and soy have led to cheap, unhealthy and addictive processed foods that make food businesses rich but people sick.
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Working with obese patients for 30 plus years, my observations are that processed carbohydrates are the leading cause of obesity and their reduction leads to the best results. The historical graph of when processed sugar and flour were introduced into the American diet, clearly shows that obesity (which was relatively rare in the 1900's) and the dramatic increase in mid to late 20th Century is directly correlated to the rise of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. If fats were the cause of obesity in humans, then diets like the Atkins Diet and its many derivatives, would increase weight, not decrease it. The other evidence is in the poor populations where obesity is exploding: what to they eat? The least expensive food is processed carbohydrates.
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There's another way to look at this: For many people, processed carbohydrates are a fat-delivery device.
It's not the fettucine; it's the Alfredo sauce.
It's not the pizza crust; it's the mozzarella (and ranch dressing)
It's not the potato; it's the butter or gravy, or the fat it's fried in, or what's "loaded" onto the skins.
Cut the potatoes, for example, and all those other fat inputs disappear.
Don't make this more complicated than it has to be. Watch the processed carbs. And mind the fat.
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@Lorem Ipsum
All of those food combinations are refined carbs and refined fats together, minus any significant protein.
4
This article brought to you by Healthy Choice and Snackwells. It's like 1997 all over again!
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From reviewing the Acknowledgements and the Competing Interests section of the paper I see no mention of sponsorship by Snackwells. Do you mean this as an expression of cynicism? I’m cynical too (the article is flawed for lacking a ketogenic diet arm, a glaring expression of bias) but also find your comment misleading.
The title of this article should be “Which Kinds of Foods Make Mice Fat?”
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Leave these animals alone! You want to lose weight? Stop eating so much! There, that's my diet plan! I'm going to write a book and make millions.
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@Toni
“The Final Diet, Simply Don’t Eat”
The causality between the suffering of Chronic Starvation, more than half of the world, and being Quite Skinny has been already proven empirically beyond any scientific doubts.
1
What would be the reason to imagine lab mice are a good testing model for human nutrition? Sure mice are easy to run scientific tests; humans are very difficult to work with.
The fact is we know that the mice study can not be accurately translated to humans. Humans can get fat on a low fat diet even if mice can't (or at least the studied mice couldn't).
So, "the results are suggestive"????? How and of what exactly? By not stating anything explicitly, the author leaves the reader to make the incorrect inference: eat anything you want as long as it is low fat and you won't gain weight. We know how well that worked as the large gain in obesity in the American population occurred just as we were being very conscious of fat content and the food industry responded with all sorts of "fat free" or "low fat" foods.
18
These mice died for us. Let's hope this is useful info.
9
The analytical mind in me asks, please, for a graph with weight gain vs caloric intake, color-coded for low, medium or high fat. This summary is really poor. The male choice without explanations is ... sloppy in a generous interpretation.
But the fellow animal in me asks: what is the ethical justification for treating mice like this? Truly disturbing.
11
Yes go ahead eat sugar and starches dont forget to add some vegetable oils to it. Last time I checked myself I was still a carnivore animal. Fats are what we are made off. Easy to absorb and easy on the body. All these studies are poorly executed, maybe if the researchers ate more fats their brains would work better.
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@Rafael: you are a carnivore and eat lots of fats. I eat mostly vegetables, starches, and yes sugars. If I eat chicken twice in the same week I feel bloated.
Ten thousand years ago some of our ancestors ate lots of meat, and some were pretty much vegetarians. Still today.
3
I am a whole fat person. Whole fat milk, yogurt, ice cream, butter. You need the fats. They are a part of your cells. It's basic to cell biology health. Real fats will prevent cancer too. Cancer rates went way up after margarine enters the food chain, those fats become a part of the cell and it causes issues.
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When study results such as these are published I tend to wonder about the sources of funding for the studies.
21
"The scientists hope to include female mice in later experiments."
Females are left to 'hope' -- the improvement being at least a mention of the fact that approximately half the population isn't included in the experiment. Female bodies pose more of a research challenge...we plan to get to it one day...research dollars are scarce...efficiencies must be heeded...one day, in some lab somewhere, we hope to get to you. In the interim, here are our scientific findings.
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If the mice could "move about their cages at will": what was the weight change among those who sat around compared to those who skurried about? Did they have an exercise wheel? If so, who used it and who didn't? And, do mice have varying sleep habits? If so, what was the effect of that on energy expenditure and on calorie cravings (we humans may eat more as we sleep less)?
3
A fascinating case of...negative negative returns to additional fatty food. Up to a point more fat in the food means more weight. After that point though the fat "gross out" factor, which leads to less eating and therefore less weight, overwhelms the positive link between fat and weight gain. As a fan of these types of relationships, thank you!
2
Composition of the diet that made the mice fat, please. What percentage of fat, and what fats were used? Did it include refined flour? It's especially confusing that you report that the high-fat diet caused obesity, but the super-high-fat diet did. And then you say the super-fat-diet contained only 60% fat, which is actually low compared to LCHF and ketogenic diets. That makes me suspect the high-fat diet was actually still pretty high in carbohydrates.
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@Mimi
The full text of the study is linked. The dietary fat was a mix of cocoa butter, coconut oil, menhaden oil, palm oil and sunflower oil. ("This mix was designed to match the balance of saturated, mono-unsaturated and polyunsaturated fats ... and the n-6: n-3 ratio ... in the typical western diet.") The carbohydrates were sucrose, maltodextrose and cornstarch. The protein was casein.
2
@Mimi Protein is casein with a bit of cystine. Fats are in order of abundance: Palm Oil (more than half of all), Cocoa butter (about 30%), some Safflower oil, and a bit of Menhaden Oil and Coconut oil.
1
When The Mouse Times contacted members of the Mouse community for comment on this study, the response was that they’ve put their best Mouse Scientists to perform a meta-analysis of all diet studies on mice and the results will be published in the BMJ (British Mouse Journal) early next year...
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@Fiona
Fabulous. Thank you.
4
@Fiona
Will that be available online? I hope so.
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@Fiona
I love it!
3
What kind of fats did the mice eat? Saturated fats? Trans-fats? Olive oil? Walnuts? Avocados? Deep fried in reused oil foods? C’mon, “fats” is just too broad a category.
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@Dfkinjer, the article, which is currently available in full at:
https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(18)30392-9
doesn't say, but the wording of it implies fats in general--i.e., of all kinds.
Reading the whole thing, two more things stand out to me:
1. High protein diets don't reduce weight (in male mice)
2. The authors had a really cute graphical abstract:
https://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/8b47dcc1-4e55-4020-9504-67742ca6074a...
Cheers
6
@Dfkinjer From the supplemental data to the paper (available but hidden in plain sight):
Palm oil -- mostly
Cocoa Butter -- quite a bit
Coconut oil-- less
Menhaden oil -- least
Safflower oil -- a bit
8
Dfkinjer, just click on the link and your questions will be answered.
2
Thank goodness I'm not a mouse...
27
@Crimhead,
You would have been a delightful sugared treat for British children in the 19th century, and used as a cure-all for the elderly and invalid at the time. Perhaps you should reconsider. Your best pal, Mouser
1
Fat has 9 calories/gram. Sugar and protein each have 4 calories/gram.
If the mice ate an equal number of grams of food, those on the high fat diet would get twice as many calories. And thus gain more weight.
6
people in photos from previous eras are mostly skinny - I suspect because they did more physical exercise and also had more natural foods which were not so calorie-dense as today's deep fried fatburgers.
after chewing through one apple you'll probably stop eating for a while
as you say - fat may have twice the calories/gram as sugar or protein - but when today we can swallow in seconds more calories than we can burn off in hours at the gym - then I suspect more conscious choice about what we put in our mouths is a place to start.
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@Frank
Studies find we did not get more exercise fifty years ago. The difference is diet -- we ate "balanced" home cooked meals rather than sugar laden high carb junk. The average American now consumes 131 pounds of sugar a year!
3
@Frank: my family has a strong history of obesity on my mom's side. Several relatives who weighed over 350 lbs -- one aunt who was 425 lbs.
You'll never see a photo of them, because they rarely went out. They were virtual recluses. One reason is there was NO CLOTHING available for them -- at their size, everything down to their underwear had to be sewn by hand.
There were no electric scooters or walkers or large wheelchairs, so they were trapped at home.
In old photos, you ALSO do not see black people or the disabled, for some of the same reasons. It does not follow they did not exist.
BTW: my relatives, born in rural Eastern Europe in the late 1800s has no access to soda...fast food....chips or snack foods....takeout or pizza. They did hard physical labor on farms and grew all their own food. They still got very, very fat.
Also: some of those "thin folks" in old photos were actually malnourished! had scurvy and rickets and pellagra! or tuberculosis.
1
So we're going full-circle on the war on [insert makro ratio here] again. I'm going to forward this piece to my Keto friends this time.
4
*listens attentively for sound of incoming keto-proponent stampede*
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@attractivenuisance
In the study, the last line in the Discussion->|Limitations of Study section is this: " Lastly, none of the diets we used were sufficiently low in carbohydrate to drive the individuals into ketogenesis, which is another factor suggested to affect weight regulation (Sumithran and Proietto, 2008, Wilder and Winter, 1922)."
So this doesn't apply to keto diets.
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@attractivenuisance
The diet the mice ate was not ketogenic, and in any case, mice are herbivores -- they have a very different metabolism than people, who are omnivores, do.
6
@Josh Hill, Actually mice are opportunistic omnivores, and will gladly eat meat. It's one of the reasons they get used in these experiments.
2
Since the days of Ancel Keys the government has been advocating low fat diets. Groceries are full of "low fat" foods. So why the ever rising epidemic of obesity?
155
Where is the quantitative evidence that people actually reduced fat consumption in response to the guidelines ?
12
@Craig Willison
The government is not an unbiased arbiter, and on one hand while promoting a low fat diet, through farm subsidies is promoting cheap food that causes obesity. High Fructose corn syrup is dirt cheap thanks to Uncle Sam, and is used not just in sodas that are guzzled by many people, but in processed foods as fillers, including bread products many people eat. Government subsidies make for cheap white flour, that likewise fills up processed food people eat; dirt cheap corn is used to gouge cattle and along with hormones and antibiotics make for cheap, fatty, unhealthy meat that is used by fast food and processed food; and soybeans, which are healthy, but are mostly turned into processed soybean oil that is a very unhealthy fat. It isn't just fat, it is diets loaded with cheap flour, sugar and bad fats that is causing the problems. Not to mention we had the glorious low and no fat products (snackwells, anyone?), promoted by doctors in many cases , that were loaded with sugar and salt to make them "yummy". The obesity rate has gone from 15% to 40% in 40 years, and it can be tracked against the rise of fast and processed foods as people's main diet.
5
@bill d: Soybeans are mostly used for animal feed, especially for chickens, I think. But I don't think that there is any scientific consensus that oils derived from grains are inherently unhealthy for humans. Also, meats are far less fatty today than a few decades ago. On a strictly caloric balance basis, little more is needed to explain the obesity epidemic than the increase in consumption of total calories, particularly fructose based soft drinks, and a decrease in physical activity. Not that other highly processed junk food doesn't contribute.
1
"The scientists hope to include female mice" in later experiments? What are we waiting for, fellas? Women, real live women, have a harder time losing weight than men and are more stigmatized for being overweight. Let's start with the women, why don't we?
524
@Margery, it is my understanding that diet and body composition/weight gain are difficult to study in Women because of how hormone fluctuations impact our body mass. It isn't impossible, just extremely difficult to control for in Women.
5
@Cat, so we should just give up, then? “Sorry, ladies, you’re just too difficult.” And, by the way, complicated, why? Because women are different from men. It’s really not that women are more “complicated” or “difficult” or “tricky.” It’s just that women do not fit the male-centered medical model that has been constructed by men.
30
Sex Bias in Neuroscience and Biomedical Research
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3008499/
6
"It is neither ethical nor practical to have healthy subjects gorge themselves on one diet for years until they are obese."
We already have these "test subjects". On one hand you have millions of obese people who, through the miracle of language, can describe to you their diets and on the other hand, a completely unrelated species, eating under controlled circumstances. Self- reporters are fallible, given to self deception, or outright liars, but with such a large sample size, any information that results from a study on them should have greater import than one conducted on mice.
39
fat is bad...then fats are actually good. sugars are ignored-and years later it is sugar laced food which had made americans bulge in the middle.
everything in MODERATION! the golden rule...and most problems are easily solved.
10
@cossak The trouble with moderation is that nobody knows what it means. How much and how often? Is it once a day, once a week, once a month? A nutritionist came into our third grade classes awhile back and told the kids to eat junk food only in moderation. When I asked them what that meant, they didn't really have an answer. I've read enough studies on obesity and have enough experience with it myself to know that it is not a problem that is "easily solved," even in the most motivated.
14
As most females who have lived with a male for an extended period of time know: men gain weight very differently and can eat very differently without the same outcomes. Gender matters in health studies.
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@reader
Mice don’t have gender.
Why can’t we just say”sex”?
15
I disagree. It’s nice to use the words whose meaning is clear and specific. Mice do, in fact have gender. And a lot of sex, when given the chance.
12
Most males over 40 have a paunch, plain and simple. So while I agree that women struggle more with weight gain due to factors such as menopause, the men I see are pretty soft overall.
3
I like how scientific studies are so tilted to study males that scientists don't even use female rats, but can only aspire to do so one day.
The reason for obesity is painfully easily to see, and it has increased since the '80s. It's a deadly cocktail of the easy availability of refined carbs (sugar as well as natural carbs stripped of their satiety-boosting fiber), lack of exercise (how many people exercise regularly or at work or on their commute to work?), the proliferation of processed foods (Big Food has its pulse on what we crave), and the death of home cooking (even those lucky few who have the time and resources to do so often do not have the skill. No one wants to eat bad tasting food). Very people actually "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."
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@Dottie, as a then physician and now educator, that is exactly what I tell patients and students. I also add, move, get some sleep, get rid of the toxic substances and people in your life, and wear your seat belt. Unfortunately, our society is set up to make all these healthy, common sense measures extremely difficult to do in real life. Mice. Please.
6
I eat food, all plants, and I eat till I'm full. It works! Dr. Michael Greger actually does have the answer, at least for 95% of us.
4
@Judith Dasovich
Sadly, a lot of your colleagues in the medical profession sorely lack common sense knowledge, a lot of doctor's still have this puritanical idea that obesity is a moral failing and treat it as such. I had a physical with a cariologist not all that long ago (to verify a heart murmur I have had all my life), and while he correctly pointed out that I needed to lose weight and get in shape, he then proceeded to tell me I should eat a diet that is low fat (without I might add seperating out which fats are which), told me to take Niacin (which does nothing), and then said "well, if you don't have time to cook, there are plenty of low fat pre cooked foods out there" ....had he ever read the label on some of those?
A diet that is mostly plant based, where if animal products are used are lean protein (ie not a fatburger or a mickey d burger) and they are a relatively small proportion of the total calories eaten, you will do well.
It would be interesting and important to know if these animals had other significant metabolic changes besides weight gain.
Issues like changes in circulating lipids, glucose intolerance as a predictor of diabetes, blood pressure changes, metabolic syndrome or its equivalent in rodents, etc.?
9
In mice, in this study, moderately high fat diets led to overeating (and hence obesity). In humans, in the real world, I think a lot of other factors can lead to overeating.
21
while calories in are the same not all fats are created equal. nut and fruit fats like avocado and olive oil would be healthier than fats from fried food.
19
@pantheress08 The study was about weight gain and obesity, not healthfulness.
3
Wouldn’t overall calorie count contribute to weight gain? No mention of how much food was consumed, making this study and story moot.
13
@Bag: The study had a specific, narrow purpose. Just because it may not be the study that you would have conducted doesn't mean it is not relevant to the objectives of its designers.
28
@Bag
The mice ate as much as they wanted. When high-fat food was on offer, they consumed more calories.
8
@Bag It's been long determined that simple calorie count is not important or necessarily effective when considering weight gain/loss. A calorie from kale, watermelon, herbs, sweet potato or any other whole food is not the same as a calorie from butter, candy, pastry, or any sugary, high-fat, high sodium fast food/processed food. So, the old adage: calorie in/calorie out does equate....
6