- Eating comfort food when stressed switches off the brain region that stops you from over-eating, according to a new study.
- Under normal circumstances, this region neutralizes the chemical reward one gets from eating, making it less enjoyable.
- The phenomenon makes sense in wild animals, including non-modern humans, promoting a quick intake of energy in response to a threat.
- However, it is less helpful in today’s world, where stress is less often directly related to survival.
For people who are stressed, it may seem as if comfort food offers the ideal — and maybe only — quick fix. A new study in mice from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia suggests, however, that those people should think twice before tucking into a treat.
The study finds that the combination of stress and comfort food switches off the brain’s mechanism for letting one know when they have had enough to eat.
This can lead to an over-indulgence in one’s comfort food of choice, as well as weight gain and obesity, potentially sources of yet more stress.
The brain area affected is the lateral habenula, an organ that exists in both mice and humans. Under normal conditions, the region produces a mild, unpleasant sensation in the short-term presence of a high fat diet, switching off the brain’s reward response, thus making further eating less pleasurable. Many comfort foods are high in fat.
Working with chronically stressed mice, the researchers found that the lateral habenula remained uncharacteristically silent as high fat foods were being eaten. The mice kept eating, apparently for pleasure, without becoming satiated.
Upon further analysis, the researchers discovered that after giving stressed mice a calorie-free sweetened food pellet, they consumed twice as much sweetened food pellet (or liquid) than non-stressed mice. This demonstrates that a preference for sweets — even if calorie-free — persisted in the stressed mice.
Confirming their finding, when the researchers…
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