High fat intake post-exercise blunts muscle protein synthesis🚨

Could high fat be blunting your gains?

Ingestion of a lipid-rich meat matrix blunts the post-exercise increase of myofibrillar protein synthesis rates in healthy adults: A randomized controlled trial

Study Details

This new study recruited 16 physically active adults who performed resistance-exercise followed by either…

1️⃣ High-fat pork (266 kcal, 20 g protein, 20.6 g fat)

2️⃣ Low-fat pork (120 kcal, 20 g protein, 4.4 g fat)

3️⃣ Control (266 kcal, 0 g protein, 0 g fat, 73.3 g carbohydrate)

Here is what they found ⬇️

Key Findings

Both high- and low-fat pork ingestion increased muscle protein synthesis (MPS) 📈

But the low-fat pork elicited a significantly greater increase in post-exercise MPS vs high-fat and control 🏋️

🥇 Low-fat = 0.106 ± 0.026 %/hr

🥈 High-fat = 0.072 ± 0.027 %/hr

🥉 Control = 0.056 ± 0.035 %/hr

The absolute change in MPS from basal was significantly correlated with peak essential amino acid and leucine concentrations 📈

Conclusion

Low-fat sources of protein may be better than high-fat sources post-exercise ✅

Notably when considering muscle protein synthesis, which may have long term effects on muscular adaptation and growth 💪

Reference

https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(25)00517-9/abstract

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