text_1: On-and-off fasting helps fight obesity
text_2: This news release describes a study about intermittent fasting in mice, in which the mice that fasted weighed less four months later than the mice that did not fast. The finding described in the news release only applied to mice being fed a high fat diet (45 percent from fat), whereas when on normal chow and intermittent fasting on normal chow, there wasn’t much difference. The release was short on numbers and descriptions of measurements used, and implied that the mouse studies could benefit people, without any caveats that such a transfer of mouse discovery to practical application in humans often fails. The release did name the funders and avoided sensationalizing obesity. Obesity is an enormous public health problem. But this release misleads the reader into thinking its conclusions will transfer from the mice in the study to human patients with obesity. We were disappointed by this quote from one of the researchers: “Intermittent fasting without a reduction in calorie intake can be a preventative and therapeutic approach against obesity and metabolic disorders,” says Kyoung-Han Kim.” Based on the published study, we don’t find any evidence that this has been proven for human patients. A more accurate quote would be, “Intermittent fasting without a reduction in calorie intake can be a preventative and therapeutic approach against obesity and metabolic disorders in mice being fed a high fat diet.”