Weekend Binge Eating As Bad As A Consistently Poor Diet

Eating junk food 3 days per week sabotages your healthy eating habits during the rest of the week, according to a new study.

An unhealthy diet is known to upset the balance of microbiota, but this is the first study to explain how the frequency of eating junk food affects the human body.
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To conduct their study, researchers separated rats into 3 groups: group 1 ate a healthy diet continuously, group 2 ate an unhealthy diet continuously, and group 3 ate a healthy diet for 4 days and an unhealthy diet for 3 days.

Researchers tracked the rats’ body weight, fat mass, and insulin and leptin levels over 4 months.

They found that rats that ate junk food 3 days per week were 18% heavier than those eating a healthy diet continuously and had the same gut microbiota as those that ate junk food continuously.

“These data suggest that continuous or intermittent exposure to palatable foods have similar effects on the gut microbiota,” researchers concluded.

"A reduction in the diversity of the gut's microbiota and a loss of some of the beneficial biota is clearly not a good thing for health.

--Amanda Balbi

Reference:

Kaakoush NO, Martire SI, Raipuria M, et al. Alternating or continuous exposure to cafeteria diet leads to similar shifts in gut microbiota compared to chow diet. Mol Nutr & Food Res. Published online January 19, 2016. doi:10.1002/mnfr.201500815.