Chapter 5 - Diet in different fat content and cardiometabolic health

Abstract

In the past several decades, the health effects of dietary fats on human health have been a longstanding research topic of interest. Numerous observational epidemiology studies and randomized controlled trials indicate that amounts and specific types of fat have different effects on the intermediate risk factors and incidence of cardiometabolic diseases. In countries under nutrition transition, a reduction in total dietary fat and an increase in carbohydrate consumption have paralleled the increased prevalence of obesity and cardiometabolic diseases for decades. The nutrition transition has been considered to be one of the risk factors contributing to this epidemic. We previously conducted a 6-month randomized controlled feeding trial to investigate whether a lower-fat, higher-carbohydrate diet was more effective than a higher-fat, lower-carbohydrate diet (consumed in most Western societies), for weight control and modifying cardiometabolic disease risk factors among healthy young adults. Findings from this trial indicated that a lower-fat, higher-carbohydrate diet appeared to be less likely to promote excessive weight gain than a higher-fat, lower-carbohydrate diet. The higher-fat, lower-carbohydrate diet was also associated with unfavorable changes in gut microbiota, fecal microbial metabolites, and circulating proinflammatory factors in healthy young adults. This chapter will discuss evidence from population-based studies regarding diets with different fat-to-carbohydrate ratios and cardiometabolic health and provide an overview of our previous key findings.