When is a high fat diet really a high fat diet?

The paper I mentioned some time ago about the preservation of both fat oxidation and cardiac function on a high fat (60% of calories from fat) diet compared to Western diet (45% from fat) is now available in full text for free. The paper is long (10 pages) and detailed and makes anyone touting an apoE-/- mouse, or a fat stupid one, look pretty dumb. It will take some analysis and it's the World Congress of Veterinary Anaesthesia at the moment so I'm not doing detailed reading this week.

A minor snippet in abstract form which further backs up the idea that you have to manipulate your experimental set up to show the adverse effects of high fat diets is this one. Having lots of mitochondria appears to be a good thing. This fits with Power, Sex and Suicide. One approach to minimising free radical damage is to have lots of mitochondria running at tickover (with uncoupling proteins in abundance). It also suggest that if you are going to have a coronary occlusion, better be in ketosis if you wish to recover! Of course the occlusion is a bit unlikely if you are in ketosis anyway....

Are either of the papers dubious? Well, they fit with my personal experience of what it feels like to eat a high fat diet. But then I'm not eating 16% of calories as refined sucrose!

Peter