The early origins of food preferences: targeting the critical windows of development

Abstract

The nutritional environment to which an individual is exposed during the perinatal period plays a crucial role in determining his or her future metabolic health outcomes. Studies in rodent models have demonstrated that excess maternal intake of high-fat and/or high-sugar "junk foods" during pregnancy and lactation can alter the development of the central reward pathway, particularly the opioid and dopamine systems, and program an increased preference for junk foods in the offspring. More recently, there have been attempts to define the critical windows of development during which the opioid and dopamine systems within the reward pathway are most susceptible to alteration and to determine whether it is possible to reverse these effects through nutritional interventions applied later in development. This review discusses the progress made to date in these areas, highlights the apparent importance of sex in determining these effects, and considers the potential implications of the findings from rodent models in the human context.-Gugusheff, J. R., Ong, Z. Y., Muhlhausler, B. S. The early origins of food preferences: targeting the critical windows of development. FASEB J. 29, 365-373 (2015). www.fasebj.org Key Words: programming • high-fat diet • reward BOTH HUMAN AND ANIMAL studies have provided compelling evidence that the nutritional environment an individual experiences before birth and/or in early infancy is a key determinant of his/her subsequent metabolic health outcomes. In particular, individuals who are exposed to maternal overnutrition during the perinatal period (i.e., before birth and while breastfeeding/early infancy) have a greater propensity toward excess food intake and weight gain in childhood and adult life (1-6). More recently, animal studies have demonstrated that in addition to predisposing individuals to consume more energy overall, perinatal exposure to high-fat and/or high-sugar diets also increases the preference for palatable "junk foods" in the offspring (7,8).Over the past few years, studies from our group and others have provided novel insights into the biologic mechanisms that underlie the developmental programming of food preferences. These studies have strongly implicated altered development of the central mesolimbic reward system (opioid and dopamine pathways) as a potential mechanism by demonstrating that prenatal fat/ sugar exposure can alter gene expression of key components of this pathway and the way in which it functions. To date, the majority of studies on the mesolimbic reward pathway have focused on the consequences of being exposed to high-fat and/or high-sugar diets during the entire perinatal period. However, given that the development of central reward systems begins before birth and extends into the fourth week of postnatal life in the rodent (9-11), there has been growing interest in defining whether there are "critical windows" of reward pathway development during which exposure to a maternal junk food diet is most detrimental. A critical window for the purpo...

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“…Rodents have been used as a model for the analysis of multiple brain circuits, including the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, strongly related to food choices. In these animals, dopamine receptors can be detected in the mesolimbic system at the beginning of embryonic life, being vulnerable to environmental stresses, as the nutrition, in this period (Gugusheff et al, 2015).…”

Developmental programming by maternal obesity in 2015: Outcomes, mechanisms, and potential interventions

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