You might hate me, thinking I have one of those annoyingly efficient metabolisms that just burn up fat the instant it enters my body. You might wonder if I have an intestinal worm, or perhaps an eating disorder. Or maybe you'd just shrug your shoulders and figure I have a rich fantasy life.
You'd be wrong.
For my body to pull off such a gastrointestinal miracle, I would have to be a mouse. Not just any mouse, but one lucky enough to be involved in a new study at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
After identifying an enzyme that allows fat to be stored in the body, scientists bred mice without those enzymes, and found those mice were able to consume far more food than their unaltered fellow mice — and still weigh 10 to 15 percent less.
Best of all, the enzyme-deprived mice were in robust health, producing baby mice with no problem and generally acting like any other mouse. That's great news for obesity researchers, who speculate that scientists may figure out a way to inhibit the fat-metabolizing enzyme in humans and control weight gain. And such a pill would be nothing short of a miracle for many struggling to shed dangerous excess pounds.
But don't start planning any guilt-free buffet binges just yet: At this point, of course, any pill for humans is but a twinkle in the eye of every pharmaceutical company's CEO. More extensive tests are on the horizon, and eventually human subjects will be introduced.
But for now, unfortunately, moderation is still key.