How Does Your Body Deal With Fast-Food Meals?

Abstract

Eating a less-than-healthy diet can increase the chances of becoming obese, which usually happens when body organs have difficulties using or storing the excess fat and sugar that we eat. To better understand how what we eat affects the functioning of our organs, we measured substances called metabolites, which come from food, in the blood of obese minipigs. We then used computers to figure out what happens to these metabolites inside the liver following normal meals or a fast-food meal. We found that the liver fights against unhealthy food by finding ways to use or remove the excess fat and sugar. However, some of the paths normally followed by healthy food might become blocked when we eat too much unhealthy food. Our work showed that a better understanding of how the liver processes the metabolites from unhealthy diets could help people suffering from the effects of obesity.