High-fat diets ‘could injure brain’s body-weight-controlling cells’

High-fat diets can injure cells in the brain that control a person's body weight, researchers have claimed.

Scientists from the Diabetes and Obesity Center of Excellence at the University of Washington in Seattle made these claims following a study involving animal models.

"The possibility that brain injury may be a consequence of the overconsumption of a typical American diet offers a new explanation for why sustained weight loss is so difficult for most obese individuals to achieve," said Dr Joshua Thaler, a faculty member with the Diabetes and Obesity Center of Excellence.

Dr Thaler and his colleagues studied the short-term and long-term effects that eating a high-fat diet had on the brains of rodents.

The results of the study are to be presented at The Endocrine Society's 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston.

Earlier this month, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions revealed that low-carb, high-fat diets are no more harmful to the arteries than low-fat, high-carb alternatives.

Do you think you could reduce the amount of fat in your diet?