{"id":223330,"date":"2025-10-24T19:46:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T19:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/223330\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T19:46:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T19:46:14","slug":"certain-snacks-are-more-likely-to-cause-winter-weight-gain-study-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/223330\/","title":{"rendered":"Certain snacks are more likely to cause winter weight gain, study suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Snacking on treats high in saturated fat this winter could trick your body into storing more fat, a recent study<\/a> has found.<\/p>\n

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) found that dietary fats can influence how our bodies measure the passing of the seasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found that the types of food that you eat help to tell the time of year to your biological clock,\u201d lead author Dr Dan Levine<\/a> \u2013 a postdoctoral scholar of neurology at UCSF \u2013 told BBC Science Focus.<\/p>\n

They found that if we eat more saturated fat \u2013 found in red meat, butter, cake, pies and other buttery baked goods \u2013 a protein called PER2 tells the body that it\u2019s summer and that we should store more energy to prepare for the cold winter months.<\/p>\n

But if we eat more unsaturated fat \u2013 the type found in nuts, seeds, oily fish and vegetable oils \u2013 PER2 makes the body believe it\u2019s winter, and that we should burn the energy we eat.<\/p>\n

At least, these are the results of an experiment on mice, which the UCSF team exposed to periods of light<\/a> and dark, to simulate the changing seasons.<\/p>\n

The rodents experienced 12 hours of light per day when the scientists wanted to mimic spring and autumn, 20 hours of light for summer and only four hours of light for winter.<\/p>\n

As the nights got longer in fake winter, mice who were eating a balanced diet exhibited normal winter behaviour for the nocturnal rodents \u2013 they began to run on their wheels as soon as it got dark.<\/p>\n

But mice who were fed a high-fat diet took a little while to wake up, and started running much later than the fake sunset<\/a> \u2013 suggesting their internal clocks were slightly out of sync with the light cycles.<\/p>\n

Then, the scientists compared the effects of different types of dietary fat. They found that mice who ate a diet high in saturated fat didn\u2019t wake up and start running on their wheels until many hours into the night.<\/p>\n

\"FoodsSaturated fat is solid at room temperature, found in butter and fatty meats, as well as many baked goods – Credit: Getty images<\/p>\n

So, their internal clocks seemed even further out of sync with the light patterns when they ate more saturated fat in fake winter.<\/p>\n

Levine said that, while the study was done on mice, the interaction between these fats and the body\u2019s internal clock via the protein PER2 was shared across species.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think that many of the lessons we have learned from our studies on mice will be generally applicable to humans,\u201d he said. \u201cIt will be exciting to see what differences, if any, exist between the species.\u201d<\/p>\n

How our bodies may be wired for winter<\/p>\n

For wild animals and hunter-gatherer humans, adapting to the seasons is crucial for survival \u2013 particularly to endure a long, cold winter where food resources may be scarce.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the wild, seasonal water, light and temperature patterns completely change the landscape and force organisms throughout the food chain to adapt,\u201d explained Levine.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of these adaptations is that plants produce more unsaturated fat to survive the cold, which causes herbivores \u2013 and carnivores \u2013 to consume and store more unsaturated fat.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, our bodies might be programmed to expect more unsaturated fats as the days get shorter.<\/p>\n

But this natural dietary switch is a process that many of us miss out on because we have access to the same foods all year round.<\/p>\n

We can eat our saturated-fat favourites regardless of the season \u2013 but eating too much of it in autumn and winter could confuse our biological clocks into thinking it\u2019s summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn modern society, food is readily available, including saturated fats,\u201d senior author Prof Louis Ptacek<\/a>, neurologist at UCSF, told BBC Science Focus. \u201cWe also tend to eat at \u2018unnatural\u2019 times of day, and we can do this because of electric lights. In general, it\u2019s healthier to eat on a schedule that\u2019s locked to the circadian daytime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Levine added that it may also be beneficial to eat foods according to the season \u2013 and perhaps alter our fat sources over the course of the year. But, he said, further studies were needed to confirm that this approach would be beneficial.<\/p>\n

Read more:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Snacking on treats high in saturated fat this winter could trick your body into storing more fat, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[102,6636,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-223330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-nutrition","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}