Short-term Fat Overfeeding on the Effects of Liver Metabolism

Despite work showing the overconsumption of saturated fatty acids (SFA) to be metabolically deleterious, debate continues about whether there is a link between SFA and cardiovascular disease risk. To explore this, we are undertaking a human in vivo parallel-design study, comparing two isocaloric high-fat diets; one enriched with SFA and the other enriched with unsaturated fatty acids (UFAs), to determine the impact of dietary fat composition on postprandial metabolism, liver fat, cardiac fat and cardiac function.

The investigators will recruit men and women with no medical condition or relevant drug therapy that affects lipid, glucose or liver metabolism. Purpose and design: The investigators are asking the research question: "How does the amount and type of fat consumed, influence liver fat content, cardiac function and postprandial fatty acid and liver fat metabolism when someone is not gaining or losing body weight?" To address this research question investigators want to undertake detail physiological studies, in a parallel dietary intervention, where individuals will have an MRI/S scans to assess liver fat, cardiac fat and cardiac function, along with a postprandial study day to assess how their metabolic response to a experimental test meal, before and then 28 days after consumption of a eucaloric, high fat intervention diet that will be either enriched in saturated or unsaturated fat.