ZEIST, Netherlands—Research at TNO demonstrated that the body shape of overweight people influences how their fat tissue responds to dietary fats, leading researchers to conclude that distribution of body fat in overweight people represents an important consideration when providing dietary advice.
One widely held approach to managing obesity-related disorders is shifting from a diet rich in long-chain poly unsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) to a diet based on medium-chain fatty acids (MCT), due to the rapid breakdown of MCTs and their routing directly to the liver instead of being stored as fat tissue.
The TNO findings, however, indicate that the extent of the favorable effect of consumption of MCT-rich diets strongly depends on the body fat distribution of an obese individual. The study compared people with an “apple” shape (predominant fat deposition around the waist) to those with “pear” shapes (fat depositions on the hips and thighs).
“By measuring the activity of all the genes in the fat tissue of obese volunteers, we were able to identify individual responses to the different fats,” says principal investigator Dr. Marijana Radonjic. “Interestingly, we found that the effects were opposite in “apple type” and “pear type” subjects. An MCT-rich diet increases the expression of genes responsible for driving metabolic processes in the fat tissue of “pear type” individuals, but has a contrary effect in “apple type” individuals. In addition to suppression of metabolic genes, MCT-rich diet causes inflammation in fat tissue of “apple type” individuals. Therefore, we show for the first time that although MCT-rich diet may have positive effects for “pears,” it has adverse effects on the obesity-related complications of “apples.”
