Dietary carbohydrates articles from across Nature Portfolio

This study addresses the hypothesis of dietary glucose handling in humans through a postprandial lactate shuttle.

Here, the authors develop a high-throughput method to quantify Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis (BL. infantis), a proficient HMO-utilizer, from metagenomic sequencing, and applied it to a longitudinal cohort consisting of 21 mother-infant dyads, suggesting BL. infantis colonization to start late in the breast-feeding period.

The role of dietary fat vs sugar in the global obesity epidemic remains controversial. Using Nutritional Geometry methodology, the authors show that, in mice, both fats and sugars could lead to adverse metabolic outcomes, depending on the dietary context.

A study published in this issue of Nature Metabolism adds to the emerging evidence that the small intestine is an initial site of dietary fructose metabolism, especially at low fructose doses, thus decreasing exposure of the liver and the colonic microbiome to intact fructose.