Fatty Liver? Foods to Avoid

Nonalcoholic fatty liver, a disease tightly linked to the obesity crisis, is a strong risk factor for heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, and in severe cases it can lead to liver failure. There are no official dietary guidelines to treat it. But whether certain foods might fuel the disease is a subject that is drawing increasing attention from scientists.

Researchers have questioned the involvement of a number of dietary factors — trans fats, omega-6 oils, fried foods and fructose, to name a few. But one that has attracted perhaps the most attention is sugar, in part because it is metabolized in the liver and it is known to increase blood levels of triglycerides, a type of fat.

Studies suggest that sugar consumption contributes to liver fat accumulation. And there is some data indicating that people who carry genetic variants associated with fatty liver are particularly sensitive to increased fat accumulation in response to sugar and refined carbohydrates.

One of the first pieces of dietary advice that clinicians who treat fatty liver give to their patients is to eliminate sugary drinks from their diets. But doctors say that patients with the disease are typically consuming too many calories of all kinds, not just sugar.

Often, patients are told to avoid eating heavily processed foods, which are easy to consume in large quantities and usually stripped of their fiber and other naturally occurring nutrients. Preliminary studies have found so far that fatty liver patients respond well to the Mediterranean diet, which includes plenty of fresh produce, nuts, olive oil, poultry and fish.

One small clinical trial published in The Journal of Hepatology last year found that a Mediterranean diet had a more favorable impact on liver fat and insulin resistance than a low fat, high carbohydrate diet. And another study in the journal Clinical Nutrition, which involved 90 overweight patients with fatty liver, found similar success with a Mediterranean approach.

As funding for fatty liver research grows, scientists expect to carry out more dietary intervention studies.

Right now, the only proven method of reducing fat in the liver is weight loss. In the clinic, doctors tell fatty liver patients to aim for an initial weight loss of at least 10 percent of their body weight, which can be accomplished by limiting junk food and engaging in regular exercise. Dr. Kathleen Corey, the director of the Fatty Liver Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, advises her patients to exercise at least three times a week for 45 minutes.

~New York Times, June 27, 2014