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Medicine

how diet affects your body's chemistry

a new study found changes in metabolites - tiny molecules in the blood - when people eat more or less fat than carbs.

Illustration: Blue Dot News

1 min read

In a world where what we eat can shape our bodies and minds, researchers have been searching for the perfect balance. They've asked: "How does what's on our plate affect our overall health?" The answer lies in something as simple as carbohydrates to fats. A team of scientists found that changing this ratio can have significant effects on how our metabolites work.

Imagine your body is a complex machine, with many different parts working together in harmony. Metabolites are like the tiny tools inside us, helping our cells function properly. When we eat, these metabolites change to help our bodies process what we've consumed. The researchers measured these changes in 147 participants who followed three different diets: low-carbohydrate, moderate-carbohydrate, and high-carbohydrate. They found that certain metabolites changed more with higher carbohydrate-to-fat ratios.

These findings can have a big impact on how we approach our health. For instance, some triglyceride species linked to type 2 diabetes risk increase when the diet is higher in carbohydrates. This means that understanding how different diets affect our metabolites could lead to new strategies for managing diseases like diabetes. By studying what happens when we eat, researchers can help us make better choices about the food we put on our plates – and improve our overall health as a result.

The people behind the work

  • Angelidi AM et al.

    Author

    Published in Nature communications

Source: Nature communications

Sources & Verification

Every statement in this story is drawn from the facts below. Each is linked to a primary or reputable source — follow any citation to check it for yourself.

  1. Diet plays a crucial role in health, with low-carbohydrate diets often proposed to exert metabolic benefits. Nature communications
  2. We measure fasting plasma metabolites by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry using samples from 147 participants who completed the study (n = 45, 48, and 54 in the high-, moderate-, and low-carbohydrate diet groups, respectively). Nature communications
  3. Significant associations (False Discovery Rate<0.05) are identified between carbohydrate-to-fat ratio (CFR) and diet-induced changes in 148 of 479 metabolites at 20 weeks, with nearly all showing consistent trends at 10 and 20 weeks. Nature communications
  4. Phosphatidylcholines plasmanyls/plasmalogens, phosphatidylethanolamines plasmanyls/plasmalogens, and sphingomyelins generally decrease with higher CFR, whereas lysophosphatidylcholines, lysophosphatidylethanolamines, and triglycerides generally increase. Nature communications
  5. Our findings are largely reproducible in an independent feeding trial involving diets with similar CFR (Popular Diets Study, ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT00315354). Nature communications
  6. Eleven triglyceride species (≤3 double bonds), linked to type 2 diabetes risk, increase with higher CFR. Nature communications
  7. Our findings demonstrate metabolomic changes caused by varying CFR dietary patterns, offering potential insights into mechanisms that could guide targeted dietary intervention strategies. Nature communications

Part of the Blue Dot News 2026 retrospective — an archive reconstructed automatically from the published scientific record. The science is real and cited above; this is not original daily reporting, and it is deliberately kept out of the live news feed.

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