Follow
People have jokingly said that they are addicted to foods like mac ‘n’ cheese, pizza or doughnuts for decades. Well, according to a new study which the journal Cell Metabolism recently published, this may not be a joke after all. It seems that fatty, high-carb foods might actually light up our brains similarly to drugs. This infamous combination of carbs and fats is hijacking our body’s natural signals which govern food consumption.
According to the results of the study, people are more wiling to spend money on such foods. Moreover, simply seeing photos of these foods lit up their brains like Christmas trees, especially in the reward center of the brain. It appears that our bodies have developed the skill to subconsciously evaluate the nutrition potential of a certain food since the days when we were hunters and gatherers. For a very large part of human history, these fatty and high-carb foods were very rare. These highly-processed foods like frozen pizza or snacks have only evolved over the past 150 years or so. This is why our brains have not yet learned that they are not nutritionally-useful, on the contrary.
The reason why our brain loves unhealthy food
You can almost feel your brain lighting up with joy each time you see a pre-packaged doughnut or cake. Our brain suddenly becomes a pinball machine and we simply cannot ignore the urge to eat these foods. In fact, this is a habitual responding that is similar to that observed in drugs.
Basically, our brains crave these foods and are yet to adapt to ignore the craving. Maybe sometimes in the future, we will finally learn to ignore foods that are not good for us in any way and stop listening to our brain. There is also the scenario where we might only eat these kinds of foods.
Image source: pxhere
