Humans, rodents and diet - a critique

[MeSci]

5 Jan 2015
Why high fat diet studies on rats and mice are not to be trusted

By Jerome Burne

Over the past year I have been wondering whether there is something deeply flawed about research into the effects of high fat diets on rats and mice, done presumably to clarify the effects on humans. The rodent work consistently tells us that high fat diets make you fat and diabetic, while research on humans finds they do the opposite. What is going on?

Full text here.

 

[ahmo]

(Bold emphasis added by me)

In fact it seems the rodent work is highly misleading. Not only are the so called ‘high fat diets’ they are fed nothing like the low carbohydrate diets any informed human would follow, but the animals have been selectively bred to ensure they become fat and diabetic on a high fat diet. This is not research, it is a rigged game.

...The confusion this fake research is (intentionally?) generating can be seen by comparing a couple of recent results from human studies with a couple from the labs...

...There was no attempt to suggest that the reaction of rodents might be different to that of humans – a basic caveat with any animal research. The assumption is that what’s bad for mouse mums is bad for humans as well.

...It’s now clear that rodent research which is being used as the basis for advice about how best to feed our children and stay healthy has been done on lab animals fed a high fat diet that is virtually guaranteed to make them fat. What’s more there is a widely used strain that have been bred over generation from animals that naturally put on weight in response to fat.

...The first witness to support this serious charge is an article on the site of the University of California Davis Health System uploaded in 2008. This says that although rodent studies provide: ‘the foundation for much of the belief that high fat diets are detrimental to health,’ most aren’t properly designed: ‘so we can’t use the results to give people recommendations on diet’.

...Remarkably, these seriously misleading high fat rodent studies are relied on as evidence for the dangers of fat by experts who should know better, such as Jeremy Pearson, vascular biologist and associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation. In an article in the magazine New Scientist in July last year entitled ‘The truth about saturated fat’ he defended the benefits of the low fat diet, commenting that the idea that a diet high in saturated fat raises the risk of heart disease: ‘remains persuasive’.

...this is not a scientific paper. Its intention is to point up a serious and avoidable source of confusion in an area already rife with confusion and misinformation.

A useful start to correct it would be for all studies to make clear what the high fat diet actually consisted of and what strain of specially selected rodent was being used and what it had been selected for. Until then, before swallowing any rodent high fat result, season it with a large pinch of salt.

 

[barbc56]

Anyone able to access the letters and comments?

Barb

 

[Scarecrow]

(Bold emphasis added by me)

...It’s now clear that rodent research which is being used as the basis for advice about how best to feed our children and stay healthy has been done on lab animals fed a high fat diet that is virtually guaranteed to make them fat. What’s more there is a widely used strain that have been bred over generation from animals that naturally put on weight in response to fat.

That will compound the problem but if you took wild type brown rats, which are omnivorous but prefer grain, and feed them the following diet, I don't think we would be surprised if they got fat.

...60% lard, 20% sugar and 20% milk protein

In the same way if you take cattle, whose natural food source is grass and leaves, and feed them grain, they get fat.

All that studies like this - and beef farming - really tell us is that if you feed an animal a diet they have not evolved to eat, it may well affect their weight. They will be malnourished.

 

[jimells]

In an article in the magazine New Scientist in July last year entitled ‘The truth about saturated fat’ he defended the benefits of the low fat diet, commenting that the idea that a diet high in saturated fat raises the risk of heart disease: ‘remains persuasive’.

How scientific of him that ideas are more persuasive than, ummm, what's the word? oh yeah, "evidence"...