One Month Of Fast Food Diet Enough To Alter Fat Cells' Response To Insulin - Science News

[hatrack]

Too much fast food could put people on a fast track to diabetes, a new study suggests. Just one month on a fast food diet was enough to alter the ability of fat cells to respond to insulin, researchers from Linköping University in Sweden reported online April 30 in Molecular Medicine. The inability to respond properly to insulin, called insulin resistance, is a hallmark of type 2 diabetes.

Cell biologist Peter Strålfors of Linköping University got the idea to put people on a fast food diet from the 2004 documentary Super Size Me, in which a man eats a steady diet of McDonald’s food and grows heavier and increasingly ill. Strålfors recruited 18 lean young people to go on a fast food binge. At the beginning of the experiment, the volunteers averaged a trim body mass index of 22.4. Body mass index, or BMI, is calculated from a person’s weight and height and indicates the degree of body fat, in most cases. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered normal.

To follow a high-calorie diet, volunteers ate two fast food meals a day for a month. They also restricted physical activity to 5,000 steps a day — half the recommend amount of daily exercise. Before the experiment began, the researchers extracted fat from under the skin of the volunteers’ bellies. Or tried to — the volunteers were so lean that researchers were able to get enough fat for analysis from only six people.

Bingeing on fast food about tripled the volunteers’ daily calorie intake, the team reports. By the end of the month, volunteers had gained an average of 10 percent of their body weight, increasing BMI to 24.3, still within the normal range. On average, the volunteers gained about 12 to 15 pounds, 7.5 pounds (3.4 kilograms) of which was fat. Fat cells collected from the volunteers at the end of the month showed a moderate amount of insulin resistance, the researchers found. The bingers were more insulin resistant at the end of the month than are most healthy people twice their age, although still not as resistant as diabetics, Strålfors says.

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http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/43850/title/%E2%80%98Super_Size%E2%80%99_diet_increases__insulin_resistance

[aquart]

1. Were they permanently damaged or did the process eventually reverse?

[MADem]

2. They need to make fast food healthier.

Telling people to give it up ain't happening.

Put soyburgers and turkeyburgers on the menu--hell, the taste comes from the mayo, catsup, mustard and pickle, anyway! Make the buns whole-grain. Go for a 'baked' french fry alternative, or a baked potato. Or carrots and apples, instead with a zesty but not bad-4-u dipping sauce.

[onehandle]

4. Welcome to America.

You must have just stepped off the boat.

Leave your commie menu behind. We're all about the FriedMcWhopperBecue.

[KittyWampus]

3. it isn't just insulin. Science now knows about leptin.

[MADem]

6. Some bozo on late night tee vee is always trying to sell me a pill to combat that stuff!! nt

[KittyWampus]

9. you can't "combat" leptin. It's a hormone we need. What needs to happen is we have to

re-program our endocrine system by removing certain foods and adding others.

[MADem]

10. Well, all I know is some jerk wants my money to "combat" it, and I'm not obliging! NT

[LSdemocrat]

5. Who'd have thought tripling calorie input and cutting exercise would result in weight gain?

And that weight gain would have side effects.

How is this newsworthy?

[thereismore]

7. It's not about weight gain. It's about insulin resistance. The food changes the way

cells respond to insulin. It can make you sick, not just heavy.

[One_Life_To_Give]

8. Food or just Calories?

Doesn't appear to be a properly controlled study, too many variables changed. Altering both the type of food as well as quantity taken in, plus eliminate exercise. Does not allow you to claim that the type of food was the cause. Statements could only be made about when all three are combined.