Anti-obesity baby formula?

In the wake of research suggesting infant formula causes obesity, scientists have gone off the deep end.

British researchers are developing an “anti-obesity” baby formula that uses a hunger-suppressing hormone to keep babies from growing up fat, according to Chemistry & Industry Magazine.

The hormone, leptin, is found naturally in breast milk but not formula. Studies in rats have suggested exposure to leptin can program the brain to prevent overeating throughout life. So those who eat foods supplemented with leptin should remain permanently slim.

It’s a seductive pitch but in real life, it never works this way. Leptin, so far, hasn’t reduced hunger in adult, human volunteers. Who wants to be the first to test this functional food in the malleable, developing brains of infants?

Early nutrition is obviously important. That's why breast feeding, which builds immunity to disease, is the gold standard. But whether a baby’s first nutrients have “programming” effects on early development and later health is still being researched.

The anti-obesity effects of breast-feeding, in fact, also are under fire, according to a Harvard study published in the International Journal of Obesity.

“It would be remarkable to find a behavior that you engage in for one year of life and see detectable effects from it 40 years later,” Larry Grummer-Strawn of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the Associated Press's Mike Stobbe.

Perhaps the anti-obesity effects are strong for children, but by adulthood, wouldn’t eating and exercise habits play a bigger role in obesity than whether you were breast-fed, or given an “anti-obesity” formula as an infant?