Prenatal stress predisposes female mice to binge eating

Stress changes our eating habits, but the mechanism may not be purely psychological, research in mice suggests. A study has found that stressed mouse mothers were more likely to give birth to pups that would go on to exhibit binge-eating-like behavior later in life. The pups from stressed mothers shared epigenetic tags on their DNA, but these markers only made a difference when the researchers put the young offspring into a stressful situation.