HIGHLIGHTS
It is not an uncommon sight to see people leading a sedentary lifestyle
Males with a sedentary lifestyle tend to prefer high-fat diet
The study which was conducted on rats
It is not a very uncommon sight to see people leading a sedentary lifestyle but it can led to many serious health conditions like obesity, cardiovascular diseases and more. According to a study, conducted by University of Missouri-Columbia, males with a sedentary lifestyle tend to prefer high-fat diet over other diets and this may add to the burden of health problems. The study which was conducted on rats showed that male rats preferred high-fat diets.
The team of researchers divided male and female rats into two groups – a sedentary group and another that had access to a running wheel; both groups ate the same food. “Our team wanted to make every effort to study female perspectives on how exercise affects diet, because most other studies neglect females,” said a study author Jenna Lee from University of Missouri-Columbia. “We wanted to take a look at what drives diet preference and if environmental factors, such as physical activity, play a role in how males and females eat,” Lee added.
After a week of observation, researchers replaced the standard diet with three optional diets that included high-fat diet (similar to cookie dough), high cornstarch diet and high sucrose diet (three times more sucrose than the other two diets). Each of the diets was matched on proteins and the rats had continuous access to all the diets for four weeks.
Male runners consumed about half as much of the high-fat diet as compared to their sedentary counterparts, however, increased their intake of the other two options. On the other hand, female sedentary rats, like their male counterparts, chose high-fat diet. However, the female runners also preferred the high-fat diet, unlike their male counterparts. In fact, they consumed slightly more calories than the sedentary females.
The result showed that males with sedentary lifestyle were more bent towards a high-fat diet unlike their female counterparts. The research draws attention to the importance of studying both men and women, according to Lee.
[“Source-ndtv”]
