According to a study out of the Washington University School of Medicine and published in the journal Diabetes, found that individuals with obesity may have a different brain chemistry that causes them to prefer sweet foods more than those who aren’t obese.
The researchers compared 20 healthy subjects to 24 people considered obese (all of whom had a body mass index of 30 or higher). Each of the volunteers in the study was between the age of 20 and 40 years of age.
“We believe we may have identified a new abnormality in the relationship between reward response to food and dopamine in the brains of individuals with obesity,” said one researcher. “In general, people grow less fond of sweet things as they move from adolescence into adulthood. Also, as we age, we have fewer dopamine receptors in a brain structure, called the striatum that is critical to the reward system. We find that both younger age and fewer dopamine receptors are associated with a higher preference for sweets in those of normal weight. However, in people with obesity, that was not the case in our study.”
They used PET scans and sweet drinks to determine if there was a correlation between the two. They found the connection between preference for sweet things and age in lean people didn’t hold true in the brains of obese people.
“We found disparities in preference for sweets between individuals, and we also found individual variations in dopamine receptors – some people have high levels and some low – but when we looked at how those things go together, the general trend in people of normal weight was that having fewer dopamine receptors was associated with a higher preference for sweets,” said another researcher.
So it may not just be a sweet tooth if you are overweight, there may be some other factors in play.
Learn more about sugar at our 10-week FREE Sugar Free Summer program! Click here to register.
Razi Berry, Founder and Publisher of Naturopathic Doctor News & Review (ndnr.com) and NaturalPath (thenatpath.com), has spent the last decade as a natural medicine advocate and marketing whiz. She has galvanized and supported the naturopathic community, bringing a higher quality of healthcare to millions of North Americans through her publications. A self-proclaimed health-food junkie and mother of two; she loves all things nature, is obsessed with organic gardening, growing fruit trees (not easy in Phoenix), laughing until she snorts, and homeschooling. She is a little bit crunchy and yes, that is her real name.
