Sweets Change Our Brain: Why Sweet Foods Are Irresistible
Consuming high-fat and high-sugar foods causes changes in activity and connectivity in the brain’s dopaminergic system, resulting in a stronger preference for these foods. 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. The paper is published in the journal Cell Metabolism . Why do we like unhealthy and fattening foods so much? How does this preference develop in the brain? “Our tendency to eat high-fat and high-sugar foods, the so-called Western diet, could be innate or develop as a result of being overweight. But we think that the brain learns this preference,” explains Sharmili Edwin Thanarajah, lead author of the study. To test this...