Grape seed extract helps prevent obesity

A lucky little group of lab hamsters at the University of Montpellier may be the envy of anyone trying to fight excess weight, according to an article on Nutraingredients.com. For 12 weeks these hamsters have been treated to a high-fat diet, downing their meals with Chardonnay. The kicker? They're losing weight.

Well, they aren't actually fed teeny bottles of Chardonnay, but the hamsters were given grape seed extract from the wine. Polyphenols from Chardonnay grape seeds are loaded with antioxidants and protect against oxidative stress, which is linked to obesity.

Researchers found that although the hamsters were fed high fat diets, the extract had a positive effect. "This is the first time that chronic consumption of grape phenolics is shown to reduce obesity development and related metabolic pathways…" wrote researchers in the journal "Molecular Nutrition and Food Research.” One of those pathways, oxidative stress, was reduced in the grape-extract group, which leads to “anti-obesity effects," wrote the researchers.

Lead by Jean-Max Rouanet, the researchers divided the hamsters into three groups. One group received a high-fat diet, another group a standard diet and the third group a high-fat diet along with the grape seed extract.

Twelve weeks later, researchers found that animals on the high-fat diet had increased abdominal fat, as compared to the hamsters on the standard diet. Those in the grape-seed group, however, did not have increased abdominal fat, according to the test results.

Researchers also found that while animals on the high-fat diet had increases in blood sugar, triglycerides, insulin and insulin resistance levels, those on the Chardonnay extract were spared "in part these effects."

"Thus," wrote the researchers, "we provided insights into one mechanism, increased oxidant stress, that probably contributes to the pathological after-effects of obesity and that may have important public health implications, being a target for interventions to decrease the pathology."

According to Stephen Daniells of Nutraingredient.com., polyphenols are getting a lot of scientific scrutiny these days because of their ability to "mop up harmful free radicals," as he wrote on the site. They are being studied as possible preventative measures against cancer and cardiovascular disease, and some are thought to protect against Alzheimer's disease as well.

(By Sheilah Desrocher, and edited by Heather Kelley)