Tip The Diet Food That Makes You Fat Search Skip to content Menu Menu follow us Store Articles Community Loyal-T Club Loyal-T Points Rewards Subscribe to Save Search Search The World s Trusted Source & Community for Elite Fitness Diet & Fat LossEating Tip The Diet Food That Makes You Fat What would happen if you ate nothing but processed diet foods for a month This has been studied The results are terrifying by Chris Shugart May 10, 2017June 23, 2022 Tags Diet Strategy, Feeding the Ideal Body, Nutrition & Supplements, Tips The Diet That Made America Fat Back in the 1990's, low-fat diets were all the rage. According to all the dietician clones and fitness "celebs" of the time, all you had to do is eat as little fat as possible and you'd be lean and healthy. ...and America got fatter. Much fatter. And sicker too. Type-II diabetes and pre-diabetes skyrocketed, hormone levels were wrecked, the word "muffin top" entered the vernacular, and junk food manufacturers got even richer. Food makers just stripped out the fat in their salad dressings and granola bars and replaced it with more sugar. Even though we know better these days, the market is still flooded with foods that have "fat free!" and "low fat!" emblazoned on the labels. And just like the 90's, these foods are usually laden with sugar in one form or another. So what happens when you eschew dietary fat and eat a lot of sugary "diet" foods? A recent study looked into this. What they found was actually more shocking than they expected. Researchers out of the University of Georgia wanted to see what would happen if they fed rats a "popular diet foods" diet. In other words, the rats ate fat-free, high-sugar foods similar to what the average human housewife gobbles down while watching The View. The subjects were divided into three groups: A low-fat, high-sugar group A high-fat, high-sugar group A balanced diet group After four weeks of eating like this and having their body composition tested with teeny-tiny little calipers, you can guess what happened: the high-sugar groups got fat. But it gets more interesting. "Our research shows that in rats fed a low-fat, high-sugar diet, the efficiency of generating body fat is more than twice as high," said the study's principal investigator, Krzysztof Czaja. In fact, the low-fat, high-sugar rodents needed less than half the number of calories to generate the same amount of body fat. Basically, the rats that got fat did so without consuming significantly more calories than the rats fed a balanced diet. So much for "calories in, calories out" and "a calorie is a calorie." Food quality made the difference here, not total calories. And if the thought of becoming "efficient" at generating body fat doesn't make you want to drop the jelly beans, you must be crazy. The high-sugar rats didn't just get fat and look bad in their bikinis, they also showed signs of liver damage. "The liver accumulating more fat mimics the effect of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease," said Czaja. Low-fat, high-sugar diets also appear to increase the bad gut bacteria associated with liver damage. Not bad enough? The sugary diets even induced chronic inflammation in the intestinal tract and brain. When your brain gets inflamed it damages the vagus nerve, altering gut-brain communication. That affects your ability to feel full, leading of course to overeating. Fat-free junk food is still junk food. Duh. And very low fat diets should have died in the 90's along with the Spice Girls. We could summarize here by saying "eat a balanced diet" but it goes deeper than that. For overall health, performance, and good body composition, eat protein, carbs, and fats, BUT make sure those are quality proteins, quality carbs, and quality fats. Sen T et al. Diet-driven microbiota dysbiosis is associated with vagal remodeling and obesity. Physiol Behav. 2017 May 1;173:305-317. PubMed. Get The T Nation Newsletters Don' t Miss Out Expert Insights To Get Stronger, Gain Muscle Faster, And Take Your Lifting To The Next Level related posts Supplements Tip Testosterone Blood Tests Are Garbage The President's total testosterone is 441. Does that mean anything? Here's what you don't know about T testing. Nutrition & Supplements, Testosterone Boosters, Testosterone Optimization, Tips TC Luoma October 22 Eating Tip Mix This Into Your Food and Lose Fat Boost insulin sensitivity and fat-burning hormones with this seed. Insulin Sensitivity, Losing Fat, Nutrition & Supplements, Tips TC Luoma January 5 Supplements Tip CBD For Lifters It won't get you high, but it might be just what the hardcore lifter needs. Nutrition & Supplements, Powerlifting & Strength, Super Health, Tips Bronwen Blunt October 12 Eating Tip Don t Lose Muscle While Dieting If you don't eat a certain amount of protein while dieting, you'll lose as much muscle as fat. Here's how many grams to shoot for. Building Muscle, Diet Strategy, Nutrition & Supplements, Protein, Tips TC Luoma October 6