The Brain Can Sense Calories

March 27, 2008

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This is not good news! Independent of taste, the brain can sense calories. This means that eating is not just driven by taste. This may give clues as to why high fructose corn syrup consumption is linked to obesity.

Studies showed that mice genetically engineered to not be able to taste sweet, still preferred sugar solutions over those that contained a non-calorific sweetener. Analysis of the brains showed as in normal mice the “reward circuitry” was switched on in the brains of the non sweet tasting mice, when they drank sugar solutions. So the mice could somehow sense the sugar independent of taste.

This awareness of calories means that the body can somehow sense the calorie content of at least some foods. This ability was probably important for primitive humans, when we were assessing which foods were best to eat for energy for hunting etc.

Now the ability to sense calories and get pleasure from them is bad news for most of us, since it may encourage us to keep eating, well after our calorie requirements have been met.

This may have implications for the link between consumption of high fructose corn syrup and obesity. As stated in a commentary on the research it has been shown that, “evidence suggests that fructose is not as effective as sucrose in terminating a meal. It may be that fructose produces stronger activation of the reward system and that removing high-fructose corn syrup as a sweetener will curb some desire for these products.”

With our current lifestyles and the wide availability of food, sometimes I think we are just doomed.

The study is in Neuron 57: 930-941, 2008 and the commentary in Neuron 57: 806-808, 2008 (not indexed by PubMed yet, so references are not linked).
photo credit: Uwe Hermann