Excess Calories During Development Cause Overeating In Adulthood, Study Finds

Unhealthy food cravings in adulthood can be traced all the way back to fetal development, according to new research from Rutgers University.

The study, published this week in Molecular Metabolism, shows that exposure to excess calories while in the womb can alter one’s brain and spur adult overeating.

The researchers made the connection by studying 6 pregnant mice, then their combined litters of nearly 50 mice pups through adulthood. They began by letting 3 mice become obese on unlimited high-fat foods during pregnancy and breastfeeding, while keeping the other 3 pregnant mice slim from a diet of healthy food.

The team found that the mice pups born to the obese mothers overate more than the mice pups born to the lean mothers when given access to unhealthy chow.

The findings suggest that children who are born to mothers who were overweight during pregnancy and nursing may similarly struggle later in life to moderate their cravings and avoid unhealthy foods and treats.

“People born to overweight or obese mothers tend to be heavier in adulthood than people born to leaner mothers, and experiments like this suggest that the explanation goes beyond environmental factors such as learning unhealthy eating habits in childhood,” Mark Rossi, professor of psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a senior author of the study, said in a press release.

One element of the research that wasn’t surprising to the researches was that the mice pups born to the overweight mothers started off at heavier weights because more calories had been passed to them through fetal development and nursing. But their weights soon matched those of the mice pups born to the healthier mothers after a steady diet of healthy food.

Once the mice matured to adulthood, however, the researchers gave both groups unlimited access to high-fat foods, and stark differences emerged again between the groups: All the mice predictably dug into the unhealthy food at first, but the offspring of the overweight mothers overate significantly more than the others.

Rossi said the result show that “overnutrition during pregnancy and nursing appears to rewire the brains of developing children and, possibly, future generations.”

From here, the team hopes their research will help inform the creation of drugs that could block excess desires to consume unhealthy foods.

“There’s still more work to do because we don’t yet fully understand how these changes are happening, even in mice;” Rossi said, “but each experiment tells us a little more, and each little bit we learn about the processes that drive overeating may uncover a strategy for potential therapies.”