PULSE Magazine | September 2019 Isssue

John Murphy, MDLinx | July 15, 2019

WHAT IS...

A CURE FOR CRAVING FATTY FOODS

Going on a short-term, low-fat diet can retrain your taste buds to better sense fatty foods, according the authors of a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. And when you sharpen your sense for the taste of fat, you’ll feel fuller faster and stop overeating—and then you’ll lose weight, they concluded. “A moderate amount of fat is good for our health, but excess fat becomes a problem,” said study coauthor Andrew Costanzo, PhD, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. “What this study shows is that if you want to lose weight, choosing lower fat foods is good because it will gradually increase your sensitivity to the taste of fat.”

Dr. Costanzo added: “This won’t change how much you like the taste of fatty foods, but instead the small amount of fat that you do eat will make you feel fuller, quicker.”

On the other hand, eating a lot of fatty foods will do the opposite. “If we eat a high-fat diet, we lose our ability to sense fat,” said lead author Russell Keast, PhD, director, Deakin University Centre for Advanced Sensory Science.

Very twin-teresting...

To reach this conclusion, the researchers had to find out whether genetics play a more important role than diet in dulling our taste buds. To that end, they recruited 44 pairs of adult twins (mean age: 43.7 years). One twin from each pair was randomly assigned to an 8-week low-fat diet (getting less than 20% of their energy from fat) and the other twin went on a high-fat diet (getting more than 35% of their energy from fat). By the end of 8 weeks, those on the high-fat diet had increased the total fat they ate by 23%, while those on the low-fat diet had reduced their total fat intake by 64%. Those on the high-fat diet lost some sensitivity for the taste of fat, but those on the low-fat diet greatly increased their fat taste (FT) sensitivity. “Individuals with impaired FT may have lower expression of these [FT] receptors, and there- fore have an attenuated satiety response after fatty food consumption. In this way, an individual who has lower sensitivity will feel less full and consume a greater quantity of energy, independent of the hedonic system,” the authors wrote. “Low-fat dieting may aid in increasing the expression of FT receptors throughout the alimentary canal, leading to an increased postingestive satiety response to fatty food and reducing passive overconsump- tion.”

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