obese women tended to derive less pleasure from food

A fascinating new research project conducted in America makes clear that overweight and obese individuals appear not to enjoy eating as much as normal weight individuals.

The research which was conducted by utilising brain scans on a number of female college students and also another group of teenagers shows that when they drank chocolate milk shakes there were very widely differing brain responses. The scans which were designed to analyse the area of the brain which releases the “feel good” compound dopamine saw that the obese women released less of it when having a milkshake compared to the normal weight women.

It is commonly thought that obese individuals take more pleasure in eating and that is why they eat too much but this new research project shows the opposite hypothesis. The psychology researchers who came from Oregon, Texas and Connecticut said that by using their brain scanning technology they could accurately predict whether the young women would in the future put on weight. They explained that because obese women tended to derive less pleasure from food they would try to compensate by eating high calorie foodstuffs such as sweets and other fatty foods.

The research which was published in the respected journal Science could open new avenues of research for weight loss medications. At Ukmedix News we have consistently maintained that a lot of weight problems are psychological and linked to the mental reactions to food and this research seems to confirm this.

The researchers spoke about how the imaging scan’s magnetic resonance which focused on the brain's Dorsal striatum area was considerably weaker in some individuals. When these same individuals were evaluated a year later it was noted that they were more likely to have put on weight. It is possible that these women are more likely to have a gene called Taq1A1 which has been connected with a lower number of dopamine receptors.