Brain keeps tabs on fat intake

"As people eat, the brain has a way keeping tabs on the fat content of what's eaten, U.S. researchers report. In studies of rats, one type of lipid produced in the gut rises after eating fatty foods. Those N-acylphosphatidylethanolamines, or NAPEs, enter the bloodstream and go straight to the brain, where they concentrate in a brain region that controls food intake and energy expenditure. 'A lot of gut hormones have an effect on food, but when you give them chronically they lose their effectiveness,' Gerald Shulman of Yale University School of Medicine said in a statement. Another nutrient-sensing, gut-derived peptide known as CCK leads animals and people to eat smaller meals, but they eat them more often, yielding no change in the overall calories consumed, Shulman said. 'Here, we gave rats NAPE for five days and saw a continuous reduction in food intake and a decline in body weight," Shulman said. "It suggests NAPE or long-acting NAPE analogs may treat obesity.' NAPEs are secreted into circulation from the small intestine in response to ingested fat and that systemic administration of the most abundant circulating NAPE, at doses naturally found in the bloodstream, lowers food consumption in rats without making food unappealing to the animals, Shulman said. The finding were published in the journal Cell"