Author: Derek Beres / Source: Big Think
- The brain’s reward system releases dopamine when tasting food.
- Researchers at Max Planck discovered a second dopamine release in the stomach, affecting higher cognitive functions.
- The more we desire a food, the weaker the second release, which might lead to overeating.
As if losing weight wasn’t hard enough. A new study from researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research reveals that we’re rewarded twice when eating. The first dopamine kick occurs when tasting food; the second, when the food reaches your stomach.
Making this process even more insidious, the more you crave the food, the less dopamine is produced by your stomach, which the researchers believe might lead to overeating.
Previous research has shown that even thinking about food starts the process of salivation by releasing a protein enzyme, amylase, which helps break down food before it reaches your stomach. Interestingly, if you head to your favorite restaurant and they’re out of the dish you’ve been craving, the emotional discontent is real. Your brain has been tricked—well, your brain tricked itself.
For this study, the researchers write that pleasant taste and nutritional value are both reinforcers for consuming certain foods. Yet the desire for a gustatory-pleasing experience overrides health concerns. They point to research highlighting the brain’s dopaminergic system as the key mediator in overeating. In simple terms: If we like it, we eat it, and keep eating it beyond the point of satiation.
As the team puts it:
Highly processed food with added fat and sugar is known to include higher food wanting and overconsumption.
This has been expressed in evolutionary terms elsewhere. Sweet and fats…
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