Going on a short-term, low-fat diet can retrain your taste buds to better sense fatty foods, according the authors of a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. And when you sharpen your sense for the taste of fat, you’ll feel fuller faster and stop overeating—and then you’ll lose weight, they concluded. “A moderate amount of fat is good for our health, but excess fat becomes a problem,” said study coauthor Andrew Costanzo, PhD, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. “What this study shows is that if you want to lose weight, choosing lower fat foods is good because it will gradually increase your sensitivity to the taste of fat.” Dr. Costanzo added: “This won’t change how much you like the taste of fatty foods, but instead the small amount of fat that you do eat will make you feel fuller, quicker.” On the other hand, eating a lot of fatty foods will do the opposite. “If we eat a high-fat diet, we lose our ability to sense fat,” said lead author Russell Keast, PhD, director, Deakin University Centre for Advanced Sensory Science. Very twin-teresting To reach this conclusion, the researchers had to find out whether genetics play a more important role than diet in dulling our taste buds. To that end, they recruited 44 pairs of adult twins (mean age: 43.7 years). One twin from each pair was randomly assigned to an 8-week low-fat diet (getting less than 20% of their energy from fat) and the other twin went on a high-fat diet (getting more than 35% of their energy from fat). By the end of 8 weeks, those on the high-fat diet had increased the total fat they ate by 23%, while those on the low-fat diet had reduced their total fat intake by 64%. Those on the high-fat diet lost some sensitivity for the taste of fat, but those on the low-fat diet greatly increased their fat taste (FT) sensitivity. “Individuals with impaired FT may have lower expression of these [FT] receptors, and therefore have an attenuated satiety response after fatty food consumption. In this way, an individual who has lower sensitivity will feel less full and consume a greater quantity of energy, independent of the hedonic system,” the authors wrote. “Low-fat dieting may aid in increasing the expression of FT receptors throughout the alimentary canal, leading to an increased postingestive satiety response to fatty food and reducing passive overconsumption.” Nurture not nature Interestingly, identical twins had the same response as fraternal twins, which indicated to the researchers that it wasn’t genetics but mostly environment that shaped sensitivity to the taste of fat. “There’s this idea that maybe some people are just not as good at sensing high levels of fat, and that they’re born that way,” said Dr. Keast. “But what we found is that genetics does not provide any protection against the dietary influence of fat.” This is significant because of the strong link between taste sensitivity and satiety, he noted. “If you are eating too many high fat foods, fat becomes an invisible nutrient. People who have a lower sensitivity to the fat taste end up eating far more kilojoules from fat because they need more to feel satiated,” Dr. Keast said. “That’s why it’s vitally important we’re careful with what we’re eating, otherwise we will get in a bad cycle of our bodies becoming accustomed to high levels of fat and requiring higher levels of fat to become satisfied,” he cautioned. “That can then lead to obesity.” Dr. Costanzo offered this advice: “If you stick to a low-fat diet for at least 8 weeks, your body will adapt to those conditions and you will become more sensitive to fat taste. Fatty foods will start making you feel fuller more quickly and you won’t feel the need to eat as much to be satisfied.” This study was supported by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council and the Centre for Advanced Sensory Science at Deakin University. Source
