High Fat Diet raises Type 2 Diabetes Risk

Thursday Oct 29, 2009 (foodconsumer.org) -- A high fat diet may increase one’s risk for type 2 diabetes, according to a new study published in the Nov 2009 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine.

The study, led by AM de Assis and colleagues from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil showed rats on a high fat diet for a year significantly increased body weight and impaired insulin sensitivity.

Early studies have found that DNA damage may be associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus and its complications.

For the study, the researchers treated rats with a high fat or a high heat-treated fat diet for 12 months and then recorded biological parameters such as blood sugar, insulin tolerance, glucose tolerance and fat cell glucose oxidation, along with general health parameters such as body weight, retroperitoneal and epididymal adipose tissue. However, only animals subjected to the thermally treated high fat diet showed decreased epididymal fat cell glucose oxidation.  The heat-treated high fat diet promoted an increase in lipid peroxidation in the liver, causing significant damage in lipids.

The high fat diet, on the other hand, caused more severe damage in blood and hippocampus DNA, but the heat-treated high fat diet caused even more damage than the high fat diet.

The researchers concluded "These results show a positive correlation between high fat diet, glucose dyshomeostasis, oxidative stress and DNA damage."