Diet foods are making you fat

"Most so-called diet products containing low or no fat have an increased amount of sugar and are camouflaged under fancy names, giving the impression that they are healthy."

More bad news for Big Sugar: High-fat foods are often the target when fighting obesity but sugar-laden "diet" foods are actually keeping people heavy.

In a study by the University of Georgia, researchers discovered that rats on low-fat, high-sugar diets - similar to ones eaten by people who favor popular "diet" foods - had more body fat than others on a more balanced diet. All of the excess sugar from the "diet" foods also caused problems like liver damage and brain inflammation.

"Most so-called diet products containing low or no fat have an increased amount of sugar and are camouflaged under fancy names, giving the impression that they are healthy," said the principal investigator, Dr. Krzysztof Czaja. "The reality is that those foods may damage the liver and lead to obesity as well," he said.

More bad news for Big Sugar: High-fat foods are often the target when fighting obesity but sugar-laden "diet" foods are actually keeping people heavy.

Over a few weeks, rats were grouped by diet: high-fat and sugar, low-fat and high-sugar and a normal, balanced diet. Both groups with either high fat or sugar had increased liver fat, body weight and body fat - more than twice the amount - in comparison to the balanced group. The buildup of liver fat is especially alarming because it produces the same amount of damage seen in alcoholics.

The unbalanced diets caused chronic swelling in the intestines and brain, too. The added pressure on the brain causes damage that hinders the gut-brain communication line that alerts us to a full stomach.

"The brain changes resulting from these unbalanced diets seem to be long term and it is still not known if they are reversible by balanced diets," Czaja said. "What's really troubling in our findings is that the rats consuming high-sugar, low-fat diets didn't consume significantly more calories than the rats fed a balanced diet. The rats on this diet needed less than half the number of calories (than the balanced dieters) to generate the same amount of body fat."

Follow NEWS.am Medicine on Facebook and Twitter