A man is seen eating fast food on a street in Beijing. China faces a diabetes epidemic, a new report has warned, with rising obesity levels and an ageing population helping to trigger a major public health problem. (AFP/File/Peter Parks)
Posted on 03/28/2010 6:47:57 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SUNDAY, March 28 (HealthDay News) -- Obese people often say they'd like to eat less but feel almost powerless to stop indulging, and now new research suggests that explanation might be all too true.
The theory stems from a study in rats. When researchers gave the rats unlimited access to a calorie-laden diet of bacon, pound cake, candy bars and other junk food, the rats quickly gained lots of weight. As they plumped up, eating became such a compulsion that they kept chowing down even when they knew they would receive an unpleasant electric shock to their foot if they did so.
Meanwhile, rats fed the human equivalent of a well-balanced, healthy diet -- and given only limited access to the junk food -- didn't gain much weight and knew enough to stop eating when they received the cue that a foot shock was imminent.
Even more startling, the researchers report, is that when they took away the junk food from the obese rats and replaced it with healthier chow, the obese rats went on something of a hunger strike. For two weeks, they refused to eat hardly anything at all.
"They went into voluntary starvation," said study author Paul Kenny, an associate professor at Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Fla.
So what might this say about human behavior?
Researchers aren't certain if the results apply to people struggling with their weight. But they say it's possible that a diet heavy in highly rewarding foods -- quite literally, sausages, cheesecake and other highly processed foods -- might cause changes in the brain's reward system for satiety.
When that goes awry, the result is not only that people gain weight, but that they feel compelled to seek out more and more junk food.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
A man is seen eating fast food on a street in Beijing. China faces a diabetes epidemic, a new report has warned, with rising obesity levels and an ageing population helping to trigger a major public health problem. (AFP/File/Peter Parks)
Humans are not rats and it is the processed carbs , not the fat alone that cause the so called epidemic.
Yep, now that Obama on hook for health costs social control is necessary.
Oh, you meant that kind of rat.......my bad.
But I love my chocolate...They will have to pry it out of my cold, dead hand!!!
This biological phenomenon comes from our ancestral past when eating meat straight off the fire triggered the desire to go out and get more fresh meat. I guess that is early man’s equivalent to junk food. Right?
No ObamaCare for fatties!!! “Get thin if you want in!”
I didn’t need a rat to tell me that crunchy Cheetos make feel like I need a support group. :)
I pulled a frozen pizza out of the emergency food supply if that is considered junk food then might as well give me a cow lick.
It was so sodium laced and tasteless I would even feed it to my dogs...just tossed it.
Think Izzys is in the dinner plans this week.
The article is flawed imo.
Chocolate is NOT junk food.
If they had their way, grocery stores will no longer be places where the individual has any choice for what they buy. All “junk food” will be eliminated from the shelves and you will be scrutinized by your food purchases. No one will be able to buy their own oil to make their home fried potato chips. No! No! No! That oil will be used to run the buses.
LOL...It better not be!!!
For me, it’s the carbs. They make me shake with hunger.
In the daytime I’m Mister Natural, just as healthy as I can be,
but at night I’m a junk food junkie, good Lord have pity on me...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLiVeRJTtqo
I think it’s catching up to me, or my scale is broken. I know I’ve sucked down a lot of Budweisers lately, but at 56 years old, weighing 115-117 pounds is ridiculous. But I do need a haircut rather badly ...
Bacon isn’t junk food. That being said, going with whole, unprocessed food has helped me lose weight. Not scientific, but it works for me.
bacon is nature’s perfect food
Spoiled rats.
I think there’s something to this. I seem to have become addicted to sweets. And the more I eat them, the more I want.
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