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A new study, conducted on mice, hints at an unexpected contributor to America's epidemic of obesity — and, if later human studies bear it out, a possible way to have our cake and eat it too, with less risk of weight gain and the diseases that come with it. The weight-loss trick works like this: just eat your cake — or better yet, an apple — earlier. Then wait 16 hours, until breakfast the next morning, to eat again. I don't know what they're trying to prove with this experiment, but the data shows that your body might need a break from managing incoming fuel, otherwise you may be working yourself into a state of metabolic exhaustion. When combined with high-calorie, high-fat diets, the result is weight gain, a liver clogged with fat, accumulation of cholesterol in the arteries, and unused glucose in the blood. But according to the results of the study, you can eat as much junk food as you like for eight hours and remain healthy by not eating jack for the rest of the day.

Here's how the experiment played out: several groups of mice were put on different eating regimens for 100 days. Animals in two of the groups dined on high-fat, high-calorie chow. Half of them were allowed to eat whenever they wanted, and nibbled on and off throughout the night and day. The other mice had access to food only for eight hours at night, when they were most active. The difference was astonishing. Even though they ate a high-fat diet, the mice who wrapped up their eating day early and were forced to fast for 16 hours were lean — almost as lean as mice in a control group who ate regular chow. But the mice who noshed on high-fat chow around the clock became obese, even though they consumed the same amount of fat and calories as their counterparts on the time-restricted diet. Extra weight wasn't their only problem. The obese mice developed high cholesterol, high blood sugar, fatty liver disease, and metabolic problems. The mice who ate fatty food but were forced to fast showed hardly any signs of inflammation or liver disease, and their cholesterol and blood sugar levels were the same as those of mice who ate regular chow. When put on an exercise wheel, they showed the most endurance and the best motor control of all the animals in the study.