When mice eat certain fats that have gone bad, their liver cells get stressed and start dying off because of a chain reaction inside their cells.

When you eat certain fats that have gone bad, they turn into chemicals that might kill liver cells in a lab dish—and one of the reasons this happens is because a protein called Caspase-1 gets activated.

When mice eat foods that contain certain broken-down fats called OXLAMs, their liver cells start having trouble making energy, their energy factories (mitochondria) make more copies of themselves, and some of the mitochondria’s DNA ends up floating in the wrong part of the cell.

When mice eat foods that contain broken-down parts of linoleic acid (a common fat), their livers show more signs of damage from harmful molecules called free radicals.

When mice eat foods that contain certain broken-down fats called OXLAMs, their livers show more signs of inflammation because key inflammation-triggering proteins become more active.