Overview
- In controlled experiments, dams ate an isonutritional bacon‑flavored chow, and their offspring later gained more fat, showed insulin resistance, and expended less energy when switched to a high‑fat diet in adulthood.
- Neural analyses showed heightened mesolimbic dopaminergic activity and blunted AgRP hunger‑neuron responses to dietary fat, producing brain patterns typical of obese animals.
- The programming required maternal ingestion of the flavored diet during pregnancy and lactation, and passive exposure to food smells without ingestion did not reproduce the effect.
- Neonatal sensory‑circuit activation only exacerbated later obesity when coupled with caloric intake, indicating that learned associations between odor cues and feeding are critical.
- The team reports that a single common flavoring additive could trigger similar outcomes in mice and stresses that human relevance remains unproven pending targeted translational studies.