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New Study: Salad on Fast Food Menus Triggers French Fry Cravings
A new study reported
in the Journal of Consumer Research, reveals that when healthy items are put on a fast food menu, people order more french fries. Wait...what? Is the mere presence of lettuce on the menu enough to send consumers into a panic which requires fried food to calm them? Or is something more sinister at work here?
In one study, college students were given one of two menus. One menu featured French fries, chicken nuggets and a baked potato; the other included those same items as well as a salad. The French fries, widely perceived as the least healthful option, were three times as popular with students selecting from the menu that had the salad as they were with the other group.
"When you consider the healthy option, you say, well, I could have that option," said Keith Wilcox, a doctoral candidate at Baruch College who is one of the paper's four authors. "That lowers your guard, leading to self-indulgent behavior."
The diners most affected by the presence of a healthful item were those with the highest levels of self-control, as measured by a widely used test. Those with less self-control were far likelier to order the fries in the no-salad condition; but when the salad was included, some of them opted for it.
That's human nature for you. The only conclusion we can draw from this is that dieters should probably steer clear of fast food restaurants. But you already knew that, didn't you?
New Study Says Womens' Brains React Differently to Food Then Men's Brains Do
A new study reveals that womens' brains are hard-wired to urge them to overeat more when faced with their favorite foods. After being taught techniques to reduce hunger cravings, test subjects fasted overnight then were faced with all their favorite treats. The subjects used the mental techniques to reduce hunger and distract themselves from the treats, while a brain scan watched what happened inside their brains. While all subjects said the techniques helped them feel less hungry, the womens' brains showed a high level of activity in the part of the brain that urges them to eat. That really surprised the researchers. Why were the womens' brains so determined to make them overeat? The answer is most likely evolutionary in nature.
"Even though the women said they were less hungry when trying to inhibit their response to the food, their brains were still firing away in the regions that control the drive to eat," Wang said.
Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Addiction and a co-author of the paper, said the gender difference was a surprise and may be because of different nutritional needs for men and women, although she stressed that idea is speculative.
Because the traditional role of the female is to provide nutrition to children, the female brain may be hard-wired to eat when foods are available, she said. The next step is to see if female hormones are reacting directly with those specific parts of the brain.
"In our society we are being constantly being bombarded by food stimulus," she said in a telephone interview, so understanding the brain's response can help in developing ways to resist that stimulus.
Eric Stice, an expert on eating disorders at the Oregon Research Institute, called the findings provocative.
"I think it is very possible that the differences in hunger suppression may contribute to gender differences in eating disorders and that they are likely linked to gender differences in estrogen and related hormones," said Stice, who was not part of Wang's research team.
This is just another one of those studies that shows that there is more going on in weight gain than just calories in and calories expended. It's a complex process, and now we learn that womens' and mens' brains don't even respond the same way when they see food. None of this is terribly helpful for dieters, unfortunately.
A new study says
that high fructose corn syrup can make you fatter much faster than regular sugar.
In a small study, Texas researchers showed that the body converts fructose to body fat with "surprising speed," said Elizabeth Parks, associate professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. The study, which appears in The Journal of Nutrition, shows how glucose and fructose, which are forms of sugar, are metabolized differently.
In humans, triglycerides, which are a type of fat in the blood, are mostly formed in the liver. Dr. Parks said the liver acts like "a traffic cop" who coordinates how the body uses dietary sugars. When the liver encounters glucose, it decides whether the body needs to store it, burn it for energy or turn it into triglycerides.
But when fructose enters the body, it bypasses the process and ends up being quickly converted to body fat.
"It's basically sneaking into the rock concert through the fence," Dr. Parks said. "It's a less-controlled movement of fructose through these pathways that causes it to contribute to greater triglyceride synthesis. The bottom line of this study is that fructose very quickly gets made into fat in the body."
Great! Just what we all need...a faster way to create and store fat.
