This is the conclusion of researchers at the Royal Veterinary College here who fed female rats a diet of crisps, cheese, muffins and other processed foods throughout pregnancy and lactation. But even when fed a healthy diet, the junk-food babies had a host of medical problems that lasted beyond adolescence into adulthood. And the rats remained significantly fatter than normal with extra fat around the kidneys, another diabetes risk-factor. The female offspring were particularly badly affected, expressing high levels of glucose and the appetite-promoting hormone leptin making them very prone to obesity. read more

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