Editorial

When is a high fat diet not a high fat diet?

Richard D Feinman

Department of Biochemistry, State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY 11203 USA

author email corresponding author email

Nutrition & Metabolism 2005, 2:27doi:10.1186/1743-7075-2-27

Published:	17 October 2005

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

The observation that a high fat/low carbohydrate (CHO) diet has a beneficial effect on a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD) published today is notable given previous results showing that high fat diets have a deleterious effect on AD. Van de Auwera, et al. [1] reported that mice fed a ketogenic diet (<1% carbohydrate, 80% fat) were found to have a 25% decrease in the protein Aβ42 compared to mice fed a standard high-carbohydrate, low-fat chow diet. Aβ42 is a particularly amyloidogenic mutant form of the amyloid precursor protein whose proteolytic product β-amyloid peptide is contained in the plaques and neurofibrillar tangles that are characteristic of AD.