Quality More Than Quantity: The Use of Carbohydrates in High-Fat Diets to Tackle Obesity in Growing Rats Manzano, Manuel Girón González, María Dolores Salto González, Rafael Vílchez Rienda, José Dámaso Reche Pérez, Francisco José Cabrera Cazorla, María Elena Linares Pérez, Azahara Plaza Díaz, Julio Ruiz Ojeda, Francisco Javier Gil Hernández, Ángel Rueda, Ricardo López Pedrosa, José M. Obesity Slow digestive carbohydrates Metabolism Lipidomic analysis Growing rats This research was supported by funds provided by the Abbott Laboratories S.A. Childhood obesity prevention is important to avoid obesity and its comorbidities into adulthood. Although the energy density of food has been considered a main obesogenic factor, a focus on food quality rather that the quantity of the different macronutrients is needed. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of changing the quality of carbohydrates from rapidly to slowly digestible carbohydrates on metabolic abnormalities and its impact on obesity in growing rats fed a high-fat diet (HFD). Growing rats were fed on HFD containing carbohydrates with different digestion rates: a HFD containing rapid-digesting carbohydrates (OBE group) or slow-digesting carbohydrates (ISR group), for 4 weeks and the effect on the metabolism and signaling pathways were analyzed in different tissues. Animals from OBE group presented an overweight/obese phenotype with a higher body weight gain and greater accumulation of fat in adipose tissue and liver. This state was associated with an increase of HOMA index, serum diacylglycerols and triacylglycerides, insulin, leptin, and pro-inflammatory cytokines. In contrast, the change of carbohydrate profile in the diet to one based on slow digestible prevented the obesity-related adverse effects. In adipose tissue, GLUT4 was increased and UCPs and PPARg were decreased in ISR group respect to OBE group. In liver, GLUT2, FAS, and SRBP1 were lower in ISR group than OBE group. In muscle, an increase of glycogen, GLUT4, AMPK, and Akt were observed in comparison to OBE group. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that the replacement of rapidly digestible carbohydrates for slowly digestible carbohydrates within a highfat diet promoted a protective effect against the development of obesity and its associated comorbidities. 2022-05-10T06:33:07Z 2022-05-10T06:33:07Z 2022-03-29 journal article Manzano M... [et al.] (2022) Quality More Than Quantity: The Use of Carbohydrates in High-Fat Diets to Tackle Obesity in Growing Rats. Front. Nutr. 9:809865. doi: [10.3389/fnut.2022.809865] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/74760 10.3389/fnut.2022.809865 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ open access Atribución 3.0 España Frontiers