Lipidomics Shows health benefits of switching to plant-based fats

Switching from a diet high in saturated animal fats to one rich in plant-based unsaturated fats affects the fat composition in the blood, which in turn influences long-term disease risk.

A recent study published in Nature Medicine, conducted by a team of researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, the German Institute of Human Nutrition, and several other universities, showed that it is possible to accurately measure diet-related fat changes in the blood and directly link them to the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes the importance of healthy diets in preventing chronic diseases and recommends replacing saturated fats with plant-based unsaturated fats to lower the risk of heart and metabolic diseases. However, these guidelines are only moderately certain due to the limitations of past studies.

This new study overcomes these limitations by using a method called ‘lipidomics’ to closely analyze the fats in the blood. The detailed analysis helps link diet and disease in a new and effective way. The study combined controlled dietary intervention studies, where participants follow strict diets, with long-term health data from previous cohort studies.

In the study, researchers conducted a dietary intervention involving 113 participants. For 16 weeks, one group ate a diet high in saturated animal fats, while the other group followed a diet rich in unsaturated plant-based fats. Blood samples were analyzed using a method called lipidomics to identify specific lipid molecules that reflected the different diets consumed by each participant.

These results were then compared to data from large observational studies that tracked initially healthy participants over several years. The analysis showed that participants with higher levels of beneficial lipid molecules (MLS) had a significantly reduced risk of developing heart and metabolic diseases.

Additionally, the study examined whether individuals with low MLS levels, indicating a diet high in saturated fats, would benefit from a healthier diet. Using data from the PREDIMED trial, which focused on the Mediterranean diet rich in unsaturated plant fats, researchers found that diabetes prevention was most pronounced in individuals who started with low MLS levels.

“We summarized the effects on blood lipids with a multi-lipid score (MLS). A high MLS indicates a healthy blood fat profile, and a high intake of unsaturated plant fat and low intake of saturated animal fat can help achieving such positive MLS levels", says Fabian Eichelmann from the German Institute of Human Nutrition and first author of the study.

Reference: Eichelmann, F., et al. (2024). Lipidome changes due to improved dietary fat quality inform cardiometabolic risk reduction and precision nutrition. Nature Medicine. doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03124-1.