High-fat diet impairs memory by autophagic-lysosomal dysfunction in Drosophila

Whenever you see a "high-fat diet" study, you can usually translate that to "hypercaloric diet" study, and this one is no exception.

One fly food was 8% glucose (.308 kcal/g) and the other was 8% glucose + 20% coconut oil (.308 kcal/g + .7136 kcal/g = 1.0216 kcal/g) leaving the high-fat arm with 332% of the caloric density of the standard fly food diet. The discrepancy clouds how much of the observed effect is due to the coconut oil, and how much is due to the difference in caloric density.

I looked into how well fruit flies self-regulate caloric consumption, but all that I could find was related to carbohydrates and protein. It would seem that fruit flies don't typically eat much in the way of fats, presenting another confounder in the results.

yes. Search pubmed.gov for some excellent reviews on high saturated fat diets and the blood brain barrier.

The goal of this study is to suggest a mechanism for a high fat diet and memory issues, not to prove that the link exists which has been shown elsewhere.

Are they trying to imply that high fat diets in humans similarly affect brain autophagy? That seems like quite the causal stretch given the vastly more complex metabolic architecture of humans.

I wonder if there is a difference based on the length of the ingested fatty acids. Currently I ingest around 90 grams of MCTs per day.

I was expecting a mouse at least. Aren't these insects supposed to be feeding on fruits? Why feed them ribeyes?

who cares? I can eat a ribeye steak and feel my hippocampus waking up from a glucose-infested coma. And no fruit fly will convince me otherwise!

In fruit flies