High fat fed mice on stearic acid

The concept of finding anything positive about palmitic acid is still tantamount to research suicide. However, stearic acid is a rather different matter. It's lipid "neutral" for those poor folks who still bow their heads and kneel before the altar of the lipid hypothesis. So you can publish good stuff about stearic acid with relative impunity.

Raymond sent me the PhD thesis of Valerie Reeves, Kentucky University.

Reeves, Valerie Lynn, "A DIET ENRICHED IN STEARIC ACID PROTECTS AGAINST THE PROGRESSION OF TYPE 2 DIABETES IN LEPTIN RECEPTOR DEFICIENT MICE (DB/DB)" (2012).Theses and Dissertations--Physiology. Paper 3.

Before we think about leptin receptor defective mice (another day), we can ask questions about the control groups. Such as:

What happens if you feed a fairly typical C57Bl/6 mouse 40% of its calories from fat, based on fully saturated stearic acid?

They stay significantly slimmer than they do on CIAB (chow) and probably slimmer than when fed on 40% oleic acid (olive oil w/o the PUFA).

(EDIT As Tucker pointed out in comments: You might be able to explain the relative weight gains in terms of omega 6 PUFA. Chow was about 13% of energy as PUFA, stearic acid diet about 5% PUFA and the oleic acid diet about 14% PUFA. The correlation of PUFA with fat gain isn’t perfect but it’s quite close… END EDIT)

Now this is clearly impossible, as anyone who has read anything about Bl/6 mice and fat will be very aware. So the poor girl did it again:

This time we have p values sprouting all over the graph like mould in a Winter bathroom. For mice, chow makes you fat. Olive oil makes you fat. Stearic acid doesn't. Impossible I know, but that's twice it has happened. For fat mass the p values never make pay dirt but the writing is on the wall for oleic acid and fat gain too:

The wild type control mice were so nice in this PhD thesis that I thought I'd just put up these few figures before we consider what might happen if (gasp) you put an obese, diabetic db-/- mouse on a highly saturated stearic acid based diet.

I think palmitic acid would do exactly the same as stearic acid did for these mice. But who would risk their career with a finding like that? The corollary is that when you see a C57Bl/6 mouse get fat on a high fat diet, you know there are lots of double bonds in that fat........

Peter

Tweet