Brown Fat, A Money-Maker

Three new studies show that most adults have large deposits of "brown fat" -- calorie-burning cells that biologists once thought disappeared after infancy.

"This is a tissue whose sole physiological purpose is to expend energy," said Francesco S. Celi, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. "That makes it an ideal target" for drugs or other measures designed to make it more active. At the moment, however, the only way to activate brown fat is to stay cold, on the verge of shivering, for prolonged periods.

So... brown fat can make you skinny and there may soon be a pill that will activate your brown fat, causing it to work extra hard at burning away those love handles. But can brown fat make you rich? Yes!

Domain names like BrownFatWeightLoss.com, Fat-BurningPill.com, TheExercisePill.com and (for Brits) TheFitPill.com are just a few that could attract big bucks from marketers of weight control products. The possibilities are infinite.