Imagine being able to reduce your body’s absorption of fat, simply by ingesting micro-beads made from edible plant compounds. That’s the direction of the work by Professor Junling Guo at Sichuan University, whose lab recently developed edible polyphenol-based microbeads that trap dietary fats in the gut, reducing absorption and thereby helping with weight control. 

In tests with rats fed high-fat diets, animals that ingested the beads lost around 17 % of their body weight compared to controls, while also showing reduced fat tissue and liver stress, and increased fat excretion, without the gastrointestinal side effects commonly seen in fat-blocking drugs.