Do bad fats make you insulin resistant?
Is the Association between Dietary Trans Fatty Acids and Insulin Resistance Remarkable in Japan?
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Some fats in processed foods might make your body less able to use insulin, but only if you eat a clean diet. In Japan, people with more of these fats in their blood had worse insulin control—but not if they ate a lot of other fats too.
Surprising Findings
Japanese Americans had higher trans fat levels than native Japanese—yet no link to diabetes.
We assume Western diets = more disease, but here, the group with more trans fat had no worse blood sugar control. The ‘healthy’ group had the strongest link.
Practical Takeaways
If you eat a low-fat, plant-based diet, minimize processed foods with hydrogenated oils—trans fats may hurt you more here.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Some fats in processed foods might make your body less able to use insulin, but only if you eat a clean diet. In Japan, people with more of these fats in their blood had worse insulin control—but not if they ate a lot of other fats too.
Surprising Findings
Japanese Americans had higher trans fat levels than native Japanese—yet no link to diabetes.
We assume Western diets = more disease, but here, the group with more trans fat had no worse blood sugar control. The ‘healthy’ group had the strongest link.
Practical Takeaways
If you eat a low-fat, plant-based diet, minimize processed foods with hydrogenated oils—trans fats may hurt you more here.
Publication
Journal
Journal of Atherosclerosis and Thrombosis
Year
2017
Authors
Wao Tsutsui, Yoshio Fujioka
Related Content
Claims (6)
Dietary intake of industrial trans fatty acids, even at low levels, is causally associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.
In healthy young people, eating more trans fat for a month doesn’t make their insulin work worse than eating the same amount of butter or olive oil.
Japanese people with diabetes have more of a certain unhealthy fat in their blood than those with normal or slightly elevated blood sugar, hinting that processed foods might play a role in their condition.
Japanese people living in the U.S. have similar levels of this unhealthy fat in their blood whether they have diabetes or not, suggesting that their overall diet might mask any link between trans fat and blood sugar problems.
People in Japan who have more of a specific fat (elaidic acid) in their blood—usually from processed foods—tend to have higher insulin resistance, which means their bodies don’t use insulin well, but this link gets weaker when you account for high triglyceride levels.