The twitter hashtag has been #mousegate! The story has been quite astonishing in terms of huge claims made on a tiny base of nothing...
The story
An article was published on line on February 15th (2016). It is on open view for those of you who like ‘The Full Monty’.
The study involved 17 pre-diabetic, obese, New Zealand mice. The mice were genetically disposed, and bred, to be fat and sick. Aged six weeks they were put on one of two diets: eight mice carried on having standard chow food; the other nine were put on what the researchers called a LCHF diet (Low Carb High Fat) diet. They stuck to these diets for nine weeks, during which time weight and blood glucose readings were taken. As the end of the nine weeks (animal lovers look away now), the mice were killed so that they could be tested under post mortem.
The objective of the study was given as: LCHF diets are gaining in popularity “it is important we further consider the impact that LCHFD could have on these important aspects of metabolic regulation.” Why on earth they felt they needed to test this on mice when they list eight studies on humans in their references (and there are many more), goodness only knows. Perhaps they didn’t like the positive conclusions of the human studies!
