Research

Hormonal

A high-carbohydrate diet (60% of energy) lowers maximal adipose tissue mitochondrial respiration compared to moderate (40%) or low (20%) carbohydrate diets, potentially favoring fat storage over oxidation.

This research suggests that eating a diet very high in carbohydrates (60% of calories) might slow down how efficiently your fat cells burn energy, potentially making it easier to store fat. However, this was a small study in people who had already lost weight. It does not mean you should avoid carbs, but it hints that diet composition matters for how your body handles fuel, not just total calories.

ModerateSupportsLOW confidence
those consuming a high-carbohydrate diet (60% carbohydrate as a proportion of total energy, n = 10) had lower rates of maximal adipose tissue mitochondrial respiration than those consuming a moderate-carbohydrate diet (40%, n = 8, p = 0.039) or a low-carbohydrate diet (20%, n = 9, p = 0.005) after 10 to 15 weeks.
Benjamin T. Bikman et al. · European Journal of Clinical Nutrition · 2022

Why this rating

Small sample size (n=27), exploratory nature, and lack of pre-specified mitochondrial endpoints limit generalizability.

Source

A high-carbohydrate diet lowers the rate of adipose tissue mitochondrial respiration

Benjamin T. Bikman et al. · European Journal of Clinical Nutrition · 2022

DOI 10.1038/s41430-022-01097-3

rct · n=27Cited 9×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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