Another PUFA Rat Study

[Travis]

Here is a study conducted in 1989 that fed each group of rats an isocaloric diet that varied only in PUFA/SFA ratio. The main experiment fed ratios of 2/1 and 1/5 to the rats. Adipocytes were centrifuged an analyzed through thin plate chromatography, gas chromatography, and mass spectrometry. The results are profound, and are listed in Table 1. The total membrane PUFA/SFA ratios were about 4.3/1 and 1/3. and there were significant changes in monounsaturates as well.

This is huge, but other studies indicate that adipocytes incorporate fatty acids in ratios more representative of the diet as compared to other cells.

The PUFA rats gained more weight.

In the first experiment, animals fed the high P/S diet (P/S = 2.0) gained significantly more weight than animals fed the low P/S diet.

Table 2 shows that adipocytes from high PUFA-fed rats bind insulin to a greater degree that SFA-fed adipocytes. Tables 3, 4, and 5 show small changes in phospolipid saturation.

Interesting that the only free amino acid they fed the rats was methionine...

...20% fat, 1% vitamin mixture (Association of Analytical Chemists), 5% mineral mixture (Bernhart-Tomerelli), 0.3% choline, 0.6% inositol, 0.3% methionine, and 8% non-nutritive cellulose. The complete nutrient composition of the diet has been reported i...

This must be standard; I have seen this before in the famous rat-protein study but in much higher amounts. Check out how they induced diabetes in the rats:

After feeding the diets for 21 days, half the animals in each diet group were made diabetic by an intravenous penile injection of streptozotocin (40 mg/kg body weight) in an acetate buffer (pH 4.5) and half received acetate buffer alone.

What? Did they say penile injection? Those sadistic bastards. Can't they induce diabetes by injection anywhere else?

They even did it to the controls!

Diet Fat Composition Alters Membrane Phospholipid Composition, Insulin Binding, and Glucose Metabolism in Adipocytes from Control and Diabetic Animals