Junk food diet can cause damage seen in diabetes, experts warn

The findings illustrate just how damaging a diet made up of calorie-dense processed foods is. 

Consumption of these foods, rich in saturated fat and carbohydrates is well known in contributing to obesity rates, type 2 diabetes and its essential prerequisite, insulin resistance.

Study details​

Researches from Anglia Ruskin University began by looking at animal models of diabetes, models of diet-caused obesity and insulin resistance.

A number of rats were fed foods high in fat and sugar, including cheese, chocolate bars, biscuits and marshmallows for eight weeks.

Another group were fed rodent chow high in fat (60%) for five weeks.

The aim was to understand how high fat and high sugar diets affected the different glucose transporters (GLUT and SGLT), regulatory proteins and eventually the kidneys.

They found that these glucose transporters were present in a higher number in cases of type 2 diabetes. A high fat diet and a junk food diet caused a similar increase in these receptors.

“Understanding how diet can affect sugar handling in the kidneys, and understanding whether the use of new inhibitors can reverse these changes, could help to protect kidneys from further damage,”​ said the study's lead author, Dr Havovi Chichger, senior lecturer in biomedical science at Anglia Ruskin University.

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Source: Experimental Physiology​

Published online ahead of print, DOI: 10.1113/EP085670​​

“Experimental type II diabetes and related models of impaired glucose metabolism differentially regulate glucose transporters at the proximal tubule brush border membrane.”​

Authors: Havovi Chichger, Mark Cleasby, Surjit Srai, Robert Unwin, Edward Debnam, Joanne Marks