Dietary diacylglycerol suppresses high fat and high sucrose diet-induced body fat accumulation in C57BL/6J mice

Diacylglycerol (DG) comprises up to approxi- mately 10% of various edible oils. In the present study, we examined the effects of dietary DG consisting mainly of 1,3-species on body weight, body fat accumulation, and mRNA levels of various genes involved in energy homeo- stasis in obesity-prone C57BL/6J mice. Five-month feeding with the high triacylglycerol (TG) diet (30% TG 1 13% su- crose) resulted in significant increases in body weight, vis- ceral fat accumulation, and circulating insulin and leptin levels compared with mice fed the control diet (5% TG). Compared with mice fed the high TG diet, body weight gain and visceral fat weight were reduced by 70% and 79%, re- spectively, in those fed the high DG diet (30% DG 1 13% sucrose). In addition, circulating leptin and insulin levels were reduced to the respective control levels. Compared with high TG feeding, high DG feeding suppressed the ele- vation of leptin mRNA expression in adipose tissue, and up- regulated acyl-coenzyme (Co)A oxidase and acyl-CoA syn- thase mRNA expression in the liver. These results indicate that dietary DG is beneficial for suppression of high fat diet-induced body fat accumulation. Furthermore, it is sug- gested that structural differences in DG and TG, but not the composition of fatty acid, markedly affect nutritional behavior of lipids. —Murase, T., T. Mizuno, T. Omachi, K. Onizawa, Y. Komine, H. Kondo, T. Hase, and I. Tokimitsu. Dietary diacylglycerol suppresses high fat and high sucrose diet-induced body fat accumulation in C57BL/6J mice. J. Lipid Res. 2001. 42: 372-378.