A LITTLE fibre goes a long way.
Gary Frost at Imperial College London has found that mice on a high-fat diet gained weight less rapidly if fibre was added to their food. They used scanners to track what happens to acetate – a fatty acid produced in the gut – when fibre is broken down.
Rather than just travelling to the liver to be metabolised, the acetate also made its way to the brain, where it settled in the hypothalamus – a region of the brain that helps control hunger. Injecting acetate into the brain also curbed rodents’ appetites (Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4611).
If acetate does the same in humans, eating more fibre could curb appetites and battle obesity.
This article appeared in print under the headline “The anti-appetite molecule in fibre”
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