You Are What You Eat: How Fat Affects Your Bloodstream

July 29, 2009 — -- After being shown the immediate impact high-calorie meals can have on your bloodstream, viewers challenged ABC News to show what a healthier meal might do to the body.

"I watched you showing the effects of eating fast food on the blood stream this morning. Now show me the same test done with homemade food in a normal household and a twigs and berries diet at home. Be fair and show those results," one viewer wrote in to ABCNews.com. "I have an extra 20 [pounds] on me from eating at a fast food place for 2 years. I just want you to prove to me that the results are indeed different eating so called healthy food and twigs and berries."

So ABC News correspondent Yunji de Nies and producer Jon Garcia headed to the University of Maryland's Medical Center again — this time to show how lighter fare would affect their systems.

In the first fatty food experiment, de Nies and Garcia ordered food from some of America's most popular restaurant chains.

They each packed away more than 6,000 calories and more than 10 times the amount of saturated fat the government recommends.

The result: two hours later the fat was still chugging through their veins.

But when they had a much healthier lunch, the results were drastically different.

De Nies and Garcia opted for healthier meals from the very same restaurants they used in the last experiment. This time they began their meals with soybeans, before moving on to salmon, grilled veggies and rice. Lunch ended with apple pie the pair shared.