Restricting feeding to the active phase in middle-aged mice attenuates adverse metabolic effects of a high-fat diet

Time-restricted feeding ameliorates the deleterious effects of a high-fat diet on body weight and metabolism in young adult mice. Because obesity is highly prevalent in the middle-aged population, this study tested the hypothesis that time-restricted feeding alleviates the adverse effects of a high-fat diet in male middle-aged (12 months) mice. C57BL6/J mice were fed one of three diets for 21-25 weeks: 1) high-fat diet (60% total calories from fat) ad-libitum (HFD-AL), 2) HFD, time-restricted feeding (HFD-TRF), and 3) low-fat diet (10% total calories from fat) ad-libitum (LFD-AL) (n = 15 each). HFD-TRF mice only had food access for 8 h/day during their active period. HFD-TRF mice gained significantly less weight than HFD-AL mice (~ 20% vs 55% of initial weight, respectively). Caloric intake differed between these groups only during the first 8 weeks and accounted for most but not all of their body weight difference during this time. TRF of a HFD lowered glucose tolerance in terms of incremental area under the curve (iAUC) (p < 0.02) to that of LFD-AL mice. TRF of a HFD lowered liver weight (p < 0.0001), but not retroperitoneal or epididymal fat pad weight, to that of LFD-AL mice. Neither HFD-AL nor HFD-TRF had any effect on performance in the novel object recognition or object location memory tests. Circulating corticosterone levels either before or after restraint stress were not affected by diet. In conclusion, TRF without caloric restriction is an effective strategy in middle-aged mice for alleviating the negative effects of a HFD on body weight, liver weight, and glucose tolerance.