The key to weight loss? It could be vitamins, scientists claim.
Researchers at the Children’s Nutrition Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston studied three generations of mice in an attempt to stop successive generations becoming increasingly overweight.
The researchers found that the offspring got heavier even when they ate the same diet as their mothers.
However, the weight gain halted when the mice were given folic acid, vitamin B-12, choline and betaine. The scientists concluded that since the mice had the same genetic make-up, the vitamins must have suppressed the activity of the key genes involved in obesity.
Dr. Robert Waterland, who led the research, said that although humans don’t have the same gene that originally made the mice obese, the research “makes a nice parallel with humans because we know that a lot of humans have a genetic predisposition to obesity, especially in the current environments of food excess.”
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