Babies Need To Eat Fat, Says International Journal of Obesity

I came across this article the other day from the International Journal of Obesity, "reprinted" on the Nature.com website.

The editor concludes that babies who do not eat enough fat before age two tend to be fat as adults. The editor also suggests doing additional research to determine if a low fat diet might be problematic for folks over age two.

I think this is an excellent line of inquiry, and one that has too seldom been pursued in recent years.

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The full editor's note from the article:

This paper describes a negative correlation of fat intake in children at 10 months and two years of age with body weight, body fat, and serum leptin at age 20. The practice of giving children a low fat diet, particularly those under the age of two, is postulated by the authors to produce epigenetic changes leading to greater degrees of adiposity in adulthood. Many governmental dietary guidelines recommend full fat milk under age two, but this is ignored by up to two-thirds of parents. Education of parents is needed to alter this pattern. In addition, these data raise the troubling question of whether current recommendations for consumption of low fat milk and other low fat foods after age two also might need additional research to determine if this association with adult overweight/obesity persists after age two.