SHR

When blood sugar levels rise, the pancreas releases insulin. In healthy people this is sufficient to reduce blood sugar because the insulin tells the rest of the body to take up the glucose from the blood. In people with obesity, their bodies are less sensitive to insulin’s signal – called insulin resistance. The pancreas can compensate for this temporarily by producing more insulin, but at some point the pancreas will not be able to keep up, and then blood sugar levels start to rise. This is type-2 diabetes. The incredibly over-simplified explanation above sets the stage for a recent publication by Gao et al from the Beijing Anzhen Hospital, China, who used diet-induced obese (DIO) mice to explore if caloric restriction is capable of reversing pancreatic β-cell dysfunction. As illustrated in figure 1, 4-week old male C57BL/6 mice were fed a high-fat diet (HF) or normal chow (NC) for 8 weeks,...

Must we look beyond the food itself and towards how it’s prepared? The Mediterranean diet (MD) has no shortage of observational and experimental evidence supporting its healthfulness. Much of this comes down to the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant nature of the diet. However, food preparation and cooking influence the nutritional qualities of foods and customs in non-Mediterranean countries may be quite different from those in Mediterranean countries. Yet, this is rarely considered when applying findings on the MD derived from one population to a different population with a different cuisine. But does it matter? That is the central question of the recent review by Hoffman and Gerber, who examined how antioxidant and anti-inflammatory phytochemicals in some of the main food groups of the MD (olives and olive oil, vegetables and nuts) are influenced by food preparation and cooking. The MD is most well-known for its use of olive oil, and most clinical...

Caloric restriction and weight loss are associated with decreases in resting energy expenditure (REE). This makes sense when we understand that less body mass means there is less tissue that needs to be kept alive. However, there is often a decrease in REE beyond those decreases accounted for by changed fat-free mass (FFM) and fat mass (FM), which has become known as adaptive thermogenesis (AT). This is essentially the body’s way of fighting against weight loss in response to perceived starvation. AT was first described in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, where men ate half of their daily energy requirements for six months and ultimately lost 24% of their initial bodyweight. Their REE was reduced by 40%, of which only two-thirds could be attributed to weight loss. However, the Minnesota Starvation Experiment was conducted in the 1940s and 50s, leaving open room for error through the use of now outdated technology. Additionally,...

From a nutritional perspective, it is widely recognized that consuming a satiating diet can help prevent an overconsumption of calories through controlling appetite without deprivation. Interestingly, previous research has suggested that women are more sensitive to overfeeding and high-protein diets than men, which raises questions about sex-differences in appetite responses. To answer these questions, Bédard et al recruited 70 middle-aged, overweight-obese men and women to undergo a 4-week fully controlled feeding intervention using a traditional Mediterranean diet (MedDiet). An example of the daily nutritional composition of a 2500 kcal diet is presented in the image to the right, but everything was scaled to accommodate differences in energy intake among individuals so as to maintain weight. Before the intervention began, each participant was counselled on following the recommendations of the Canada’s Food Guide during a 4-week run-in period that led to similar dietary habits between men and women in the month prior...

In response to the global rise of diet-induced chronic disease, various health organizations have set upper limits for the consumption of added sugars based in part on research showing dose-dependent effects of added sugar consumption on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk markers. However, because most added sugars contain fructose, and because Robert Lustig compared fructose to alcohol, there has been an increasing concern towards this sugar specifically as the cause of many chronic diseases. The question remains, however, whether these concerns are warranted. In the most recent systematic review and meta-analysis on the issue, Chiavaroli et al pooled the results all controlled clinical trials to date that were greater than one week in duration and were performed in humans of all health backgrounds with a parallel or crossover design to assess the effect of fructose on blood lipids. Ultimately, 59 trials with 1,068 participants were included for analysis. Calorie for calorie Fructose...