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ABC's of Nutrition Study finds difference between low-fat and high-fat calories
Apples are a favorite healthy snack. Photo by Carol Goodrow
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Friday January 26 2:38 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - As health experts continue to debate
the best
way to lose weight, a new study weighs in on the side of a
low-fat diet.
According to the report, young girls burned fewer calories and
stored eight
times as much fat after eating a high-fat meal compared with a
low-fat meal
that contained the same number of calories and the same amount
of protein.
The study results suggest that limiting fatty foods in
children's diets may
be a key to reducing rates of childhood obesity.
..In the long run, just a few grams of fat ingested every day
over fat
requirements may theoretically lead to significant fat gain,''
Dr. Claudio
Maffeis from the University of Verona, Italy, and colleagues
write in the
January issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and
Metabolism.
Obesity is the most common nutrition problem facing children in
industrialized countries. Yet when it comes to recommending the
best way to
lose weight, health experts are at odds. While some believe that
taking in
excess calories--whether from carbohydrate, fat or protein--will
ultimately
lead to weight gain, others believe that not all calories are
created equal.
To investigate, researchers measured the rate at which 11 girls
burned fat
and calories after a low- and high-fat meal. They fed the
children,
including six obese girls, high-fat and low-fat meals that
contained 600
calories and 12% protein.
Thermogenesis--the process by which the body burns energy or
calories to
create heat--was 30% lower in both lean and obese girls after
they ate the
high-fat meal.
Girls burned more fat 5 hours after eating the high-fat meal,
but overall
they used less than 50% of the fat they had consumed.
``As a result, fat storage was 8-fold higher after a high-fat
meal than
after a low-fat meal,'' Maffeis and colleagues report.
Diet composition, the authors conclude, ``must be taken into
account among
the various risk factors that induce obesity in children.''
SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism
2001;86:214-219.
Printed with permission from Reuters. Please click here for the original article. Copyright © 2001 Yahoo! Inc., and Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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