Obesity \'programmed before birth\'
Eating a high-fat diet in pregnancy may cause changes in the foetal brain that lead to over-eating and obesity early in life, research suggests.
Tests on rats showed those born to mothers fed a high-fat diet had many more brain cells specialised to produce appetite-stimulating proteins.
The Rockefeller University team say the finding may help explain why obesity rates have soared in recent years.
The study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Previous research on adult animals had shown that when fats known as triglycerides circulate in the blood they stimulate the production of proteins in the brain known as orexigenic peptides, which in turn stimulate the appetite.
