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[DR01D]

Sciencedaily: Extended Daily Fasting Overrides Harmful Effects of a High-Fat Diet: Study May Offer Drug-Free Intervention to Prevent Obesity and Diabetes

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In a paper published May 17 in Cell Metabolism, scientists from Salk's Regulatory Biology Laboratory reported that mice limited to eating during an 8-hour period are healthier than mice that eat freely throughout the day, regardless of the quality and content of their diet.

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"It's a dogma that a high-fat diet leads to obesity and that we should eat frequently when we are awake," says Satchidananda Panda, an associate professor in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory and senior author of the paper. "Our findings, however, suggest that regular eating times and fasting for a significant number of hours a day might be beneficial to our health."

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Panda's team fed two sets of mice, which shared the same genes, gender and age, a diet comprising 60 percent of its calories from fat (like eating potato chips and ice-cream for all your meals). One group of mice could eat whenever they wanted, consuming half their food at night (mice are primarily nocturnal) and nibbling throughout the rest of the day. The other group was restricted to eating for only eight hours every night; in essence, fasting for about 16 hours a day. Two control groups ate a standard diet comprising about 13 percent of calories from fat under similar conditions.

After 100 days, the mice who ate fatty food frequently throughout the day gained weight and developed high cholesterol, high blood glucose, liver damage and diminished motor control, while the mice in the time-restricted feeding group weighed 28 percent less and showed no adverse health effects despite consuming the same amount of calories from the same fatty food. Further, the time-restricted mice outperformed the ad lib eaters and those on a normal diet when given an exercise test.

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Amir Zarrinpar, a co-first author on the paper from the University of California San Diego, said it was encouraging that a simple increase in daily fasting time prevented weight gain and the onset of disease.

[DR01D]

If this study is correct and greater downtime between meals improves health it does suggest that alternate day calorie restriction might offer health benefits beyond simple calorie restriction.

If true it's not just calories, but downtime between calories.

Edited by DR01D, 18 May 2012 - 05:35 AM.