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 "Some people may be more susceptible to dietary fat than others,"
said Russell Keast, a nutrition researcher at Deakin University in
Melbourne, Australia, who wasn't involved in the study. "The data
indicates that there may be a genetic component to dietary fat that
is highlighted in the obese," he told Reuters Health in an email.
Globally, about 60 million children, or 9 percent of all kids, will
be overweight or obese by 2020, according to the World Health
Organization. This makes them more likely to grow into obese adults
and increases their risk of premature death, breathing difficulties,
cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, fractures and mental
health issues.
The study, by Naïm Khan at the Université de Bourgogne in France and
colleagues, examined fat taste perception in 116 school children in
Algeria who were 7 or 8 years old. The group included 57 obese
children and 59 kids of average weight, with about the same number
of boys and girls.
The children were asked to come into the clinic on an empty stomach
for a taste test of a series of drinks. They were given three clear
liquids to taste, one of which contained an odorless and colorless
fatty acid known as olenic acid. Then they were asked to identify
which liquid was different from the others.
Obese children had a significantly harder time detecting the fatty
acid in the drinks than their leaner peers, the study found, with a
40-fold decreased sensitivity for the fat. There was also a
correlation between waist size and a higher threshold for being able
to detect the fatty acid.
The researchers also used saliva swabs from each child to test for
variants of the CD36 gene, which is involved in making the chemical
receptors in the taste buds that help recognize fat.
One variant of the CD36 gene, known as the A allele, is tied to
having fewer of the fat receptors, so a person with that allele
would, in principle, need more fat to be present before they could
detect it. The A allele was more common in the obese children, and
was also linked to an increased risk for obesity, according to the
results.
Other studies have linked this variant to liking more high-fat
foods, Kathleen Keller, a food science researcher at Pennsylvania
State University who wasn’t involved in the research, said by email.
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While the exact nature of this interaction is not known, Keller
said, it is also possible that regularly eating a high fat diet
could be what decreases the fat-taste receptors’ sensitivity over
time in obese kids.
To be sure, the study was small and more research is needed in a
larger group of kids before drawing broad conclusions, the authors
write in the International Journal of Obesity.
"The variant is significant but needs replication in a large cohort
with appropriate controls," Latisha Love-Gregory, a nutrition
researcher at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis,
Missouri, said in an email.
"We do not know if the variant by reducing fat sensitivity would
increase or decrease fat intake so it is hard to make dietary
recommendations at this point," said Love-Gregory, who wasn't
involved in the study.
"Regardless of genetic background, improving the diets of overweight
or obese children is paramount in reducing the risk of
obesity-associated complications such as diabetes, cardiovascular
disease and hypertension," she said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/19KiJrY
International Journal of Obesity, online March 24, 2015.
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