(Press-News.org) San Diego, CA--A new soybean oil genetically modified to be healthier than conventional soybean oil causes obesity, pre-diabetes and fatty liver in a nearly identical manner to that of regular soybean oil when part of a typical American high-fat diet, an animal study shows. The study results will be presented Friday at The Endocrine Society's 97th annual meeting in San Diego.
The recently introduced high-oleic soybean oil (Plenish, from DuPont Pioneer) had not been tested for long-term metabolic effects until this study, said the senior investigator, Frances Sladek, PhD, a professor of cell biology at the University of California, Riverside (UCR).
"While genetic modification of crops can introduce new beneficial traits into existing crops, the resulting products need to be tested for long-term health effects before anyone makes assumptions about their impact on human health," Sladek said.
Marketing for the new soybean oil claims it has 0 grams of unhealthy trans fat and more of the heart-healthy monounsaturated fats, as well as a longer shelf life. It has high levels of oleic acid and low levels of linoleic acid, a polyunsaturated fat, which Sladek said is similar to the fatty acid composition of olive oil.
Traditional soybean oil, which contains about 55 percent linoleic acid, is the most common oil consumed in the U.S. diet, and its use has increased remarkably since the 1970's, according to a study from the National Institutes of Health. Processed soybeans are the world's second largest source of vegetable oil, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In a previous study, Sladek's postdoctoral fellow Dr. Poonamjot Deol found that mice fed soybean oil as part of a high-fat diet had higher rates of obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance (an inability to efficiently use the hormone insulin) and fatty liver than did mice on a diet high in saturated fat from coconut oil.
In the new study, the researchers gave four groups of mice (12 mice in each group) different diets for six months. The control group received a low-fat diet, in which 5 percent of daily calories were from fat. The other groups received a diet with 40 percent of daily calories from fat, which Sladek said is an amount common in the American diet. One diet was high in saturated fat from coconut oil, and one had 41 percent of the saturated fat replaced with regular soybean oil. The last group had 41 percent of the saturated fat replaced with the genetically modified high-oleic soybean oil.
Mice fed a diet with either of the soybean oils had worse fatty liver, glucose intolerance and obesity than the group that got all their fat from coconut oil, the investigators reported. However, the mice whose diet included the high-oleic soybean oil had less fat tissue than the animals that ingested regular soybean oil. These mice weighed about 30 percent more than the controls that ate a low-fat diet, while the group on the diet containing regular soybean oil weighed 38 percent more than controls. The mice on the diet that was primarily coconut oil weighed only about 13 percent more than controls. Unlike the diet with regular soybean oil, the diet with the new high-oleic soybean oil did not lead to insulin resistance, according to Sladek.
"The genetically modified soybean oil does seem to have fewer negative metabolic consequences than regular soybean oil in mice, but it may not necessarily be as healthy as olive oil, as has been assumed by its fatty acid composition, and it is certainly less healthy than coconut oil which is primarily saturated fat," Sladek said.
INFORMATION:
UCR and the NIH-supported West Coast Metabolomics Center at UC Davis funded this research, which will be presented at the meeting by Deol, assistant project scientist at UCR who was supported by a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences training grant.
Founded in 1916, the Endocrine Society is the world's oldest, largest and most active organization devoted to research on hormones and the clinical practice of endocrinology. Today, the Endocrine Society's membership consists of over 18,000 scientists, physicians, educators, nurses and students in 122 countries. Society members represent all basic, applied and clinical interests in endocrinology. The Endocrine Society is based in Washington, DC. To learn more about the Society and the field of endocrinology, visit our site at http://www.endocrine.org. Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/EndoMedia.
A pilot study in 51 N.C. classrooms shows the effectiveness of a new measure in assessing the quality of practices in inclusive preschools. Not only is the Inclusive Classroom Profile (ICP) a reliable instrument, researchers say it also reveals the types of inclusive settings that may be best serving preschoolers with disabilities.
"Inclusion encourages active participation and a sense of belonging and membership for all children, with and without disabilities, who learn and develop in the same classroom," explained the study's lead author Elena P. Soukakou, senior lecturer ...
New York University chemists have developed a computational approach for determining the viability and suitability of complex molecular structures--an advancement that could aid in the development of pharmaceuticals as well as a range of other materials.
"Understanding how molecules interact and achieve stable conformations in different environments is vital to many industries," says Mark Tuckerman, a professor in NYU's Department of Chemistry and the senior author of the study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "However, the ...
Scientists from the University of Southampton have found that ocean tides have changed significantly over the last century at many coastal locations around the world.
Increases in high tide levels and the tidal range were found to have been similar to increases in average sea level at several locations.
The findings of the study are published online in the journal Earth's Future.
It is well documented that global average sea levels are rising; but tide levels, have generally been considered to have undergone little change on decadal time scales. It is also often ...
New Haven, Conn. - For once, slower is better in a new piece of technology.
A Yale lab has developed a new, radio frequency processing device that allows information to be controlled more effectively, opening the door to a new generation of signal processing on microchips. One of the keys to the technology involves slowing information down.
The new system, described in the March 5 edition of the journal Nature Communications, combines photons and phonons -- electromagnetic energy and sound energy -- to conduct sophisticated signal processing tasks by harnessing the properties ...
Dr. Liang Luo and associate prof. Jianchao Cai, a renowned researcher on fractal and capillarity and guest chief editor of FRACTALS, have published their latest paper entitled Numerical simulation of tortuosity for fluid flow in two-dimensional pore fractal models of porous media.
The tortuosity of different generations of Sierpinski carpet is calculated and analyzed by the finite volume method. A simple linear relation between the generations and tortuosity in pore fractal model of porous media is obtained. The results show a more realistic tortuosity predication for ...
Weight loss surgery does not stunt the growth of obese children when applied within a clinical pathway. It is a safe option to use and provides hope for youngsters who are unable to shed pounds through weight management programs that include counseling and lifestyle changes. So says Professor Aayed Alqahtani of King Saud University (KSU) in Saudi Arabia, after tracking the progress of almost 300 children who had all undergone such surgery through a standardized clinical pathway that was created and applied by Alqahtani in his practice at KSU. The findings are published ...
Over the next two centuries, climate change is likely to impact everything from industrial agriculture to the shape of our coastlines. The changing climate will certainly cause huge changes around the world, and the challenge is to predict exactly what impact those changes will have.
In the world of marine science, this means grappling with a process called ocean acidification. As human activity pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, some of the carbon dioxide gets absorbed into the sea, which raises its acidity.
Scientists have been concerned about this for more than ...
The planet candidate was spotted using a spectrometer which measures the 'wobble', small changes in the wavelength of light emitted by a star, caused as a planet orbits it. In 2014 researchers revisiting the data said that the 'planet' was actually just noise in the data caused by starspots. The possible existence of the planet was widely dismissed without further questioning.
But now researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and University of Hertfordshire have questioned the methods used to challenge the planet's existence. The statistical technique used ...
LOS ANGELES (March 5, 2015) - The benefits of weight loss surgery, along with a treatment plan that includes exercise and dietary changes, are well documented. In addition to a significant decrease in body mass, many patients find their risk factors for heart disease are drastically lowered and blood sugar regulation is improved for those with Type 2 diabetes.
Some patients, however, do not experience the optimal weight loss from bariatric surgery. The presence of a specific methane gas-producing organism in the gastrointestinal tract may account for a decrease in optimal ...
Tropical Cyclone 15S formed in the Mozambique Channel of the Southern Indian Ocean, and the Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM core satellite gathered data on its rainfall rates.
The GPM (core satellite) flew over the northwestern half of newly formed Tropical Cyclone 15S on March 5 at 15:36 UTC (10:36 a.m. EST). The GPM satellite is managed by both NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency known as JAXA.
GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) instrument found that the heaviest precipitation was then occurring on the western side of the circulation center. Powerful ...
