University of Navarra researchers show that not all calories are equally fattening
Carbohydrates may lead to greater weight gain than fats for the same caloric value.
Two programs of study, carried out at the department of Food Sciences, Physiology and Toxicology of the School of Pharmacy of the University of Navarra, have shown that not all the calories we eat make us fat in the same way.
This has been shown in two articles published in Molecular Genetics and Metabolism and Journal of Nutrigenetics and Nutrigenomics, two relevant publications in the field of Nutrition. They describe the results of these investigations, which compare the weight gain caused by two isocaloric diets (with the same calories), one of them rich in fats and the other rich in carbohydrates, both carried out in rodents.
According to the published results, weight gain does not depend only on how many calories are ingested, but also on the subject they are. "This difference," explains one of the study's authors, Alfredo Martínez, Full Professor of Nutrition, "is due to epigenetic changes in our cells. That is, changes caused by per diem expenses in the reading of our genes through a process we call methylation. This process alters genes in a certain way. So, although we cannot change the Genetics that we have inherited, we can change the activity of the genes through the per diem expenses. Herein lies the great revolution of Epigenetics".
In this sense, the specialist points out that different diets generate different methylations in our genes and, therefore, the reading of the genetic code is also modified. "Until now we suspected that our per diem expenses and that of our parents, grandparents, etc., affected our Genetics, but we did not understand how this alteration was produced: through the methyl groups".
congress International in Pamplona
Specifically, their programs of study found that the macronutrients of a per diem expenses rich in fat and another rich in carbohydrates affect differently a mitochondrial gene - NDUFB6 - related to energy efficiency and involved in changes in methylation that would explain why not all calories count the same. Likewise, according to Professor Alfredo Martínez, the research seems to indicate that carbohydrates, contrary to what was supposed, are more fattening than fats at equal caloric value. per diem expenses "In other words, we now know that it is not the same to ingest 2,000 kcal. with a preponderance of carbohydrates as it is to do so with a higher fat content," he stresses.
Precisely Epigenetics, together with Nutrigenetics -how the genes of each cell make that cell respond to a nutrient- and Nutrigenomics -how different nutrients make genes respond differently- will be the main specialties of the IV International congress of the Society for Nutrigenetics and Nutrigenomics (ISNN). A quotation, co-organized by the University of Navarra, which will bring together the world's leading experts in personalized nutrition and its relationship with the prevention and treatment of most chronic and metabolic diseases, such as obesity and cancer, in Pamplona from November 18 to 20.