Perils of a snack-filled diet

A high-fat diet can be bad for your health. But a snack-based “cafeteria”-style diet of highly palatable, energy-dense foods is even worse, according to a study from the University of North Carolina. The researchers found rats that ate common snack foods ate more, gained more weight, had more tissue inflammation and were intolerant to glucose and insulin (warning signs of diabetes) than rats whose diets were high fat from lard.