Habitual Daily Intake of a Sweet and Fatty Snack Modulates Reward Processing in Humans
guest reader writes:
Why we can't keep our hands off chocolate bars and co.:
Chocolate bars, crisps and fries - why can't we just ignore them in the supermarket? Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research in Cologne, in collaboration with Yale University, have now shown that foods with a high fat and sugar content change our brain: If we regularly eat even small amounts of them, the brain learns to consume precisely these foods in the future.
[...] To test this hypothesis, the researchers gave one group of volunteers a small pudding containing a lot of fat and sugar per day for eight weeks in addition to their normal diet. The other group received a pudding that contained the same number of calories but less fat. The volunteer's brain activity was measured before and during the eight weeks.
The brain's response to high-fat and high-sugar foods was greatly increased in the group that ate the high-sugar and high-fat pudding after eight weeks. This particularly activated the dopaminergic system, the region in the brain responsible for motivation and reward. "Our measurements of brain activity showed that the brain rewires itself through the consumption of chips and co. It subconsciously learns to prefer rewarding food. Through these changes in the brain, we will unconsciously always prefer the foods that contain a lot of fat and sugar," explains Marc Tittgemeyer, who led the study.
Journal paper highlights:
- Daily consumption of a high-fat/high-sugar snack alters reward circuits in humans
- Preference for low-fat food decreases while brain response to milkshake increases
- Neural computations that support adaptive associative learning are also enhanced
- Effects are observed despite no change in body weight or metabolic health
Journal Reference:
Sharmili Edwin Thanarajah, Alexandra G. DiFeliceantonio, Kerstin Albus, et al., Habitual daily intake of a sweet and fatty snack modulates reward processing in humans [open], Cell Metabolism, 2023, ISSN 1550-4131, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2023.02.015
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