Nutritional programming of white adipose tissue and mitochondrial function: Fat quality matters

Summary

Nutrition in early life has been suggested to play an important role in setting the risk of metabolic health outcomes in later life, a concept called nutritional programming. Breastfeeding is associated with a protective effect on childhood overweight and on adult metabolic health outcomes. One contributing factor to this programming effect may be the distinct supramolecular structure of the human milk fat globule. In this thesis, we examined physiological effects of lipid droplets with a structure closer to human milk fat globules. More specifically, we evaluated the effect of a postnatal diet with large, milk phospholipid coated lipid droplets on white adipose tissue and mitochondrial function. Our investigations provided the insight that exposure to the aforementioned postnatal diet in early life has a lasting impact on mitochondrial oxidative capacity in later life.