Metabolism Shifting energy-storing white adipocytes or their progenitors into energy-burning beige adipocytes could be a strategy to combat obesity. Working in mice, Babaei et al. found that transient inflammation induced adipocyte progenitors to differentiate into beige adipocytes (see the Focus by Sun et al. ). Unfortunately, mitophagy causes beige adipocytes to revert to white adipocytes in the absence of “browning” stimuli. Lu et al. found that a browning stimulus prevented the mitochondrial recruitment of the mitophagy factor Parkin and that Parkin-deficient mice maintained beige fat upon stimulus withdrawal (see the Focus by Sarraf and Youle). Sci. Signal. 11 , eaap8526, eaai7838; see also eaat1082, eaat3192 (2018).