New Obesity Treatments: "Brown fat" burns calories

What if you had a special kind of fat in your body that burned calories instead of storing them and it could be activated simply by spending time in the cold? According to three preliminary studies published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, you probably do.
Brown adipose tissue (called brown fat) helps babies, young children, and other small mammals stay warm by burning calories when activated by low temperatures. Scientists have been skeptical that adults retain significant amounts of brown fat on their bodies. But the new research shows that many of us perhaps even most do.