Cooked rice as dietary carbohydrate has anti‐obesity effect through down‐regulating lipogenic gene expression in high fat diet fed mice

Abstract

This study was investigated whether cooked rice as dietary carbohydrate source has anti‐obesity effect in mice fed a high‐fat and cholesterol diet. Male C57BL/6 mice were divided into four groups and fed either a normal diet (N) or a high‐fat (15%, w/w) and cholesterol diet (0.5%, w/w) with corn starch and sucrose (C) as a carbohydrate source, white wheat bread (B) or cooked rice (R) for 12 weeks. Cooked rice consumption significantly reduced weight gain and weight of adipose tissue compared to the corn starch or white bread consumption as a carbohydrate. Not only hepatic TG, but TC lecles in the serum and liver were significantly lower in the R group than in the C group, as were the levels of serum insulin, leptin and glucose. The expressions of hepatic lipogenic genes (SREBP‐1, SCD‐1, FAS, CD36, PPAR‐¥ã), HMGCR and ACAT1 were down regulated, but the expressions of ABCA1, ApoA1 and CYP8B1 were up‐regulated by cooked rice consumption as revealed in qRT‐PCR analysis. These results suggest that intake of cooked rice has anti‐obesity effect, passively due to inhibition of lipogenesis.