Comparative study of dietary fat: lard and sugar as a better obesity and metabolic syndrome mice model.

Background: Diet macronutrient heterogeneity hinders animal studies' data extrapolation from metabolic disorders to human diseases.

Objective: The present study aimed to evaluate different fat-diet compositions' effect on inducing lipid/glucose metabolism alterations in mice.

Methods: Swiss male mice were fed for 12 weeks with five different diets: Standard Diet (ST), American Institute of Nutrition 93 for growth (AIN93G) high-butter/high-sugar (HBHS), high-lard/high-sugar (HLHS), and high-oil/high-sugar diet (soybean oil) (HOHS). Several parameters, such as serum biochemistry, histology, and liver mRNA expression, were accessed.

Results: The main findings revealed that the HLHS diet dramatically altered liver metabolism inducing hepatic steatosis and increased total cholesterol, triglycerides, VLDL, increasing liver CCAAT/enhancer binding protein (CEBP-α), Acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) and Catalase (CAT) mRNA expression. Moreover, the HLHS diet increased glucose intolerance and reduced insulin sensitivity.

Conclusions: High-fat/high-sugar diets are efficient to induce obesity and metabolic syndrome-associated alterations, and diets enriched with lard and sugar showed more effective results.