Baby formula to fight fat

A new study claims that infant formula and other baby foods can provide a permanent protection from obesity and diabetes into adulthood.

The products, which could be on supermarket shelves soon, were reported in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the Society of Chemistry Industry (SCI).

Under development at the Clore Laboratory at the University of Buckingham, the new foods will be supplements with leptin – the hunger hormone.

Those who take the foods early in life should remain permanently slim.

"Like those people who are lean by nature even though they overeat, like we all do – they will tend to be inefficient in terms of using energy," said Mike Cawthorne, who heads the Metabolic Research group at Clore.

Cawthorne's team has already demonstrated that supplementing infant rats' diets with leptin means that they never get fat or develop diabetes - even animals fed a high-fat diet remained slim.

Leptin, the fat hormone that turns off hunger in the brain, is produced in the body throughout life.

Its discovery was heralded as a major breakthrough, but research in adults proved disappointing because individuals soon seemed to resist its hunger-quenching effect.

Hard-wiring the body's energy balance

But Cawthorne says this time things are different: providing leptin early enough effectively hard-wires the body's energy balance.

In fact, whether one is fat or thin may be determined before birth.

Feeding the hormone to pregnant rats has been found to have a lifelong impact on their offspring's predisposition to obesity.

Animals born of leptin-treated mothers remain lean even when fed a fat-laden diet, while those from untreated dams gained weight and developed diabetes - the difference boils down to energy expenditure.

The offspring of leptin-treated mothers burn up more energy. "The infants are permanently inefficient in terms of using energy," said Cawthorne.

Leptin-based products may also find their way into the pet obesity market.

Edinburgh researcher Jonathan Seckl said: "We need to know whether leptin is acting pre- and post-natally, figure out how it works, and dissect the possible side-effects before this becomes a potential approach for humans.

"Nonetheless, this is good science," he concluded.

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