Researchers Fight Fat With Baby Formula

The battle to keep pounds off may start with a baby bottle, say a team of British scientists who found that feeding large doses of the appetite-controlling hormone leptin to baby rats led to svelte adult rats. If those results translate to humans, a baby formula that chemically alters metabolism might someday prove the end of obesity.

The University of Buckingham researchers claim their innovative formula is less than a decade away, and yet naysayers are already crying foul. The difficulty of testing the hormone in human babies is only one stumbling block.  One eminent diabetes researcher deemed the approach "science fiction." (More childhood obesity stories.)