If ‘you are what you eat’, then it makes sense why excess fat consumption has been associated with weight gain and poor health.
However, not all fats are equal. Unsaturated fat found in olive oil, for example, has been found to have a positive impact on heart health by lowering cholesterol levels and reducing the risk of heart disease.
Christiani Jeyakumar Henry, Deputy Executive Director at A*STAR’s Singapore Institute of Food and Biotechnology Innovation (SIFBI) said that because olive oil is not a widely used cooking oil in local cuisines, researchers have been seeking alternative ‘heart-healthy’ oils that can cater to the Asian palate.
In collaboration with researchers from A*STAR’s Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (SICS); the National University of Singapore; and industry partners Wilmar International; Henry’s team along with researcher Sumanto Haldar, helped formulate two custom blends with Wilmar International. The blends comprised of oils widely consumed in Asia, namely, rice bran, sesame and flaxseed oils, which are rich in unsaturated fat.
Previous studies on local volunteers had shown that these oil blends matched olive oil in terms of their ability in reducing triglycerides. In their latest work, Henry’s team set out to explore how their oil blends might affect body composition.
The team recruited around 140 volunteers (half of whom were women) of Chinese ancestry who had been diagnosed with borderline high cholesterol levels. Over the course of eight weeks, the cohort consumed two meals daily of a ready-made chicken dish cooked with a tablespoon of either an oil blend or olive oil. The participants’ weight, body fat and lean mass were measured at the start and end of the study.
The researchers recorded that the menopausal women in the cohort who consumed either the oil blends or olive oil experienced weight gain at the eight-week mark. Surprisingly, this was the result of an increase in lean mass with a corresponding reduction in body fat. This suggests that consuming unsaturated fats may help older Asian women circumvent the muscle mass loss and fat mass gain that often comes with menopause.
“As far as we are aware, this is the first study that has systematically examined the role of consuming unsaturated fats on body composition in an Asian population,” said Henry.
Henry said that further trials investigating unsaturated fat intake in a larger study cohort over 14 weeks have been planned.
“With further validation of our preliminary findings, organisations such as the Health Promotion Board and the Ministry of Health could disseminate nutritional advice that certain oils and fats may play a potential role in conserving muscle mass,” concluded Henry.
The A*STAR-affiliated researchers contributing to this research are from the Singapore Institute of Food and Biotechnology Innovation (SIFBI) and the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (SICS).
