According to a new study published in Cell Metabolism, foods with a high fat and sugar content change the response of the brain as it unconsciously learns to prefer high-fat snacks. Researchers from Germanys Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research and the United States Yale University discovered that if a person consumes a small amount of high-fat and sugary food, the brain learns to consume these foods in the future.

They concluded that the desire to consume such foods can be innate or develop as a result of obesity when the brain learns this preference. To evaluate this hypothesis, the researchers gave one group of volunteers a small pudding containing a lot of fat and sugar per day for eight weeks in addition to their normal diet. The other group received a pudding that contained the same number of calories but less fat. The volunteers brain activity was measured before and after the eight weeks.

The findings of the study showed that the response of the brain to high-fat and high-sugar foods was significantly higher in the group that ate the high-sugar and high-fat pudding. It was observed that their dopaminergic system—the region in the brain responsible for motivation and reward—was overactivated. 

(Source: https://www.daijiworld.com/news/newsDisplay?newsID=1063034 )