Hormone Supplement for Formula & Babyfood Suggested

Just when you thought it might be safe to wean your baby, there is new reason to fear Frankenformula.

The latest idea for supplementing formula is a hormone called Leptin.

Leptin is a hormone all of us produce to tell our appetites that we are satisfied after a meal. Like all hormones, Leptin and Leptin receptors can get thrown out of whack. People who suffer from morbidly obesity, for example, are thought to produce less Leptin (or to produce it more slowly) than others.

What isn’t clear, though, is whether Leptin production is just lower as a cause of morbid obesity or if ignoring the feeling of satisfaction due to psychological reasons causes Leptin production to slow down.

Like all hormones, Leptin is part of a complicated puzzle. What is truly shocking, is that while we’re in the middle of childhood obesity hysteria, some researchers want to start adding synthetic Leptin to formula and babyfood!

According to an article in the Scotsman, animal tests conducted at Clore Laboratory, based at the University of Buckingham, showed that early exposure to leptin can help teach the brain to stop over-eating.

• Professor Mike Cawthorne, director of metabolic research, found that giving leptin supplements to baby rats provided protection against obesity and diabetes. Even adult rats remained slim after taking the leptin-laced supplements.
• The body naturally produces leptin throughout life, but the amount produced in infancy is thought to “hard-wire” the body’s energy-balance settings.
• It may also determine whether someone is fat or thin even before they are born. Giving an extra leptin boost early in life may therefore stop later weight gain.
• Rats born to leptin-fed mothers stayed lean even when fed a high-fat diet, while the offspring of those mothers who were untreated gained weight and developed diabetes. Prof Cawthorne said supplementing infant feed with leptin would only be giving babies what they would normally get from mothers’ milk.

My first reaction to this article is one of absolute horror. Why on earth would I want my child exposed to synthetic hormones to prevent a problem created by synthetic additives to processed foods?

I thought consumers had made it clear that the last thing we want in anything we give our babies is a synthetic hormone. In fact, I don’t even want the animals that go into making my food to have artificial hormones. Ditto on artificial sweeteners, preservatives, trans fats, chemicals that come from fertilzers or pesticides and antibiotic residue.