An interesting study but it’s in mice, so it has to be taken with a grain of salt. However, it’s an interesting finding that likely does apply to humans. How it applies exactly, remains to be seen but the effects on mice don’t come as a surprise:
Mice fed a diet high in saturated fat show shifts in their gut microbes and develop obesity-related inflammation.
The types of lipids mice consume affect the composition of their gut microbiota, which influences whether the animals develop obesity-related inflammation, according to a study published today (August 27) in Cell Metabolism. Mice fed a high-lard diet for 11 weeks developed signs of metabolic disease, while mice fed fish oil remained healthy. When the researchers transplanted gut microbes from fish oil-fed mice to antibiotic-treated mice and then subsequently fed the animals lard, the mice were protected from the typical unhealthy effects of the saturated fat.
“This paper, which had nicely controlled conditions, demonstrated that type of fat is really important for shaping microbial communities and their functional dynamics, which in turn impact our health,” said Vanessa Leone, a postdoc studying host-microbe interactions at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the study.
“It had been previously shown that switching to a high-fat diet markedly and rapidly alters the gut microbiota, but this study goes farther to show that feeding different types of fat result in very different composition of gut microbiota,” Sean Davies, a professor of pharmacology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote in an email to The Scientist. Davies, too, was not involved in the research.
A team led by investigators at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden fed mice diets with the same total number of calories, but some mice received nearly all their fat intake from fish oil, while others received large amounts of lard. As expected, the lard-fed mice gained more weight than their fish oil-fed counterparts. The lard-fed mice also developed signs of metabolic disease, including insulin sensitivity and high blood-insulin and -glucose levels, even after fasting.
Cont:
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43854/title/How-Fats-Influence-the-Microbiome/