The long-term addition of grapes to the diet of mice results in distinctive gene expression patterns, lowers fatty liver, and lengthens the longevity of animals consuming a high-fat western-style diet, according to extensive research that was recently published in the journal Foods.
Dr. John Pezzuto of Western New England University served as the team’s leader.
Pezzuto, who has published over 600 publications in the scholarly literature, expressed his extreme amazement at these findings. “We’ve all heard the adage you are what you eat,’ which is plainly accurate as eating is how we all develop from fetuses to adults. However, this research give that proverb a completely new meaning. In addition to being transformed to our bodily components, food also alters the expression of our genes, as demonstrated by our research with dietary grapes. That is genuinely amazing.”
Impacts
What impact does this change in gene expression have? This study demonstrates how fatty liver may be stopped or postponed. Around 25% of people worldwide have fatty livers, which might potentially result in harmful consequences, including liver cancer.
Grape consumption has a positive impact on the genes that affect how fatty liver develops. In supporting research, dietary grapes also impact metabolism in addition to gene expression. A group of researchers led by Dr. Jeffrey Idle just published this study in the journal Food & Function.
The study discovered that grape-supplemented meals boosted levels of antioxidant genes in addition to genes associated with fatty liver. Many people consider using nutritional supplements that offer significant antioxidant activity, said Pezzuto.
However, an antioxidant cannot be consumed frequently enough to have a significant impact. However, if you alter the amount of gene expression for antioxidants, as we saw when grapes were added to the diet, the outcome is a catalytic reaction that can actually make a difference.
Increase Longevity
This study also showed that grapes could increase the longevity of mice fed a high-fat western-style diet, which is an amazing impact.
It is well-recognized that eating a high-fat western-style diet can lead to unhealthy conditions like obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease.
The addition of grapes to the diet, which had no impact on consumption frequency or body weight, postponed natural death. Pezzuto comments that while converting mouse longevity to human lifespan is not a precise science; his best guess is that the shift seen in the study would correlate to an additional four to five years in a human’s lifespan.
