LET’S EAT: Thin people’s poo now on the health menu
April 02, 2019 • 1 min read
The world’s upwardly mobile citizens are caught in the maw of a global obesity epidemic. The rush to shrink their waistlines points to unlikely cures.
Because who can be bothered with putting a little less in the cake hole, right?
Medical researchers in New Zealand are testing (on teenagers, bless them) the potential of faecal transplants to retrain gut microbes and hopefully create a cure for obesity.
The initiative is based on studies showing that if you take the gut bacteria from a thin mouse and put it in a fat mouse, the mouse gets thinner. And what’s good for a mouse … (actually, when it comes to protein-encoding genes, mice are 85 per cent similar to humans – thanks to a shared ancestor about 80 million years ago).
”They’re like handmade chocolates,” lead researcher Professor Cutfield said.
Groan.