Craving for junk food 'inherited'

More peculiar science.

"Royal Veterinary College researchers found that when pregnant rats were fed a diet of biscuits, crisps and sweets, their babies ate more unhealthy food.

They said the British Journal of Nutrition study showed the rats' behaviour was 'programmed' in the womb.

Dieticians have stressed the importance of a balanced diet for mothers-to-be.

Scientists have already shown that, in humans, diet in early life can literally shape your future, setting your risk of obesity and heart disease.

However, the latest research suggests that, in rats at least, eating too much of the wrong food while carrying a child could be potentially harmful."

So how do they propose the initial, the very first, “craving” for “junk food” started?

Some sort of spontaneous genetic mutation? Have they found the “junk food” mutation?

Nope.

“The female rats used in the Wellcome Trust funded research were either given a balanced diet of ‘rat chow’ - an unappealing but reasonably healthy diet - or access to as many doughnuts, biscuits, muffins, sweets and crisps as they could consume.”

“Unappealing” to whom, BTW?

So here is the real meat of the story - no one will come out and say this stuff is of value, but will suggest that they receive more money for additional research.

"...Fiona Ford, a research nutritionist from the University of Sheffield, said...'While this is interesting research, these mechanisms are so finely tuned that I don't think we understand them yet.'

Dr Atul Singham, from the Institute of Child Health in London, also said that he was slightly sceptical about the likely scale of "foetal programming" in child diet until it could be proven in human studies.

He said: 'This is what we are looking into - but at the moment there is no data in humans to support this, and obviously it is very difficult to carry out intervention studies such as these in pregnancy.'

Tracy Kelly, of the charity Diabetes UK, cautioned against extrapolating to humans from studies on rats.

'Much more work needs to be done before we draw any firm conclusions on how a junk food diet in pregnancy can affect the baby?s craving for the same diet.'"

No more work, let alone "much more work needs to be done."

You just need to manage your Calories in and your Calories out.

Then success happens.

Done.