🥩 Rethinking nutritional villains: Not all trans‐fats are bad

Contrary to popular opinion, not all trans fats are bad for you.

Trans fats naturally found in dairy and beef products can reduce risk factors associated with heart disease, diabetes and obesity.

70% of trans fats in in dairy and beef comes from trans‐vaccenic acid (TVA).

Mice fed a TVA enriched diet for 16 weeks had:

• 50% lower blood fats

• 30% lower total cholesterol

• 25% lower ‘bad’ cholesterol

This benefit is due to the ability of TVA to reduce how much cholesterol and fats are released into the bloodstream from the intestine after a meal.

🥊 Punchline

Natural animal-based trans fats are different than harmful hydrogenated trans fats created through industrial processing.

😋 Hunger hormones: A novel treatment for obesity

The hunger hormone, named ghrelin, promotes eating and increases fat accumulation.

Under normal conditions, ghrelin receptors are highly active in the brain than other tissues.

However, this study showed that ‘deleting’ ghrelin receptors in some white blood cells reduced diet-induced inflammation, insulin resistance and fat infiltration in the liver.

Simply put, ghrelin receptors in white blood cells control chronic inflammation in obesity by regulating white blood cells programming.

🥊 Punchline

This underscores that the hunger hormone ghrelin is not only a hunger hormone, but also an important nutrient-sensor and immune regulator.

🥦 Healthy diet early in life protects versus IBD

Studying 80,000 children revealed that…

Having a high dietary intake of fish and vegetables at 1 year of age, and a low intake of sugar beverages, seems to protect against inflammatory bowel disease, such as Crohn’s disease.

The hypothesis is that healthy dietary patterns positively affect the bacteria in the gut which is particularly sensitive during the first years of life.

In comparison, high intake of sugar beverages was associated with a 42% increased risk of inflammatory bowel disease, compared to a low intake.

But this study was done in high income countries and so the results could not be generalised to all countries.

🥊 Punchline

Overall, this study shows that good nutrition early in life, possibly mediated by changes in the gut microbiome, can significantly affect the risk of chronic diseases of the gut.