Or perhaps high-fat foods just taste better?
I’m trying to figure this one out:
The reason why we love french fries, crisps and chocolate bars so much has less to do with a lack of willpower and more to do with the brain learning to prefer such high-fat, sugary foods, according to a new study by German and U.S. researchers.
Learning to prefer? Casual observation of children’s first tastes of such things indicates to me that no learning is necessary.
More:
During their investigation, 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.
A second, control group received a pudding that contained the same number of calories, but less fat. The volunteers’ brain activity was measured before and during the eight weeks.
“Using an interventional study in healthy, normal-weight participants, we demonstrate that, independent of body weight gain and alterations in metabolic markers, exposure to [high-fat, high-sugar] food reduces preferences for low-fat food,” the study said.
That, in turn, “plays a critical role in up-regulating brain responses to anticipation and consumption of highly palatable, energy-dense food, and has a generalized effect on the neuronal encoding of PEs in the context of associative learning and independent of food rewards.”
Researchers found in the group that ate the high-sugar and high-fat pudding that brain’s responses to them were greatly increased. For those participants, the diet activated the dopaminergic system — the region in the brain responsible for motivation and reward.
I wonder why they used pudding, which to me doesn’t seem like a very high-reward food at all in general (unless it’s tapioca, which has sentimental appeal related to my youth). But as a person who has eaten low-fat pudding and high-fat pudding, sweet pudding and less sweet pudding, my guess is that if all you eat is the low-fat low-sugar variety you get used to it, and then when you eat a higher-fat higher-sugar type you think where have you been all my life? I just don’t think a ton of learning is involved. I’d say it’s more of a reminder of how much better that stuff can taste compared to the other stuff.
And then there’s this curious fact:
Researchers said, though, that the participants who ate high-fat, high-sugar pudding did not gain more weight than those in the other group, and their blood sugar or cholesterol did not change, either.
And all you low-carb advocates note: the pudding wasn’t only higher-fat, it was higher-sugar.
Hmmm, pudding. When was the last time I had pudding? I have the distinction of being 100% lactose intolerant – they did a nasty test on me many years ago, which involved having me drink what seemed like a gallon of lactose after a fast, and then measuring my blood sugar at intervals. No absorption of the lactose at all, and I’ll spare you the other sordid details of what happened to me that day. But I do eat milk products on occasion anyway, and I recall that as a child I was very fond of that My-T-Fine butterscotch type. It was especially good when it was allowed to develop a “skin” on top, something you’re supposed to discourage but something I thought was…mighty fine.
Neo says, “I wonder why they used pudding . . .”
Because Brandon likes it and probably owns stock in every company that makes pudding cups.
I am reading this having just completed my daily dose of Butter pecan ice cream and Kahlua. I think humans are programed genetically to prefer high fat foods. After all, when starvation was a real risk, fat was precious.
The posted snippet refers to “crisps” instead of “chips”, which indicates a European/British origin. Pudding in the UK can refer to anything that comes in the dessert course.
As to the rest, for most of humanity’s history, getting enough food (read: sufficient daily calories) was laborious and time-intensive. Fat has more than twice as many calories per gram than either protein or carbohydrates (9 vs. 4 & 4), so it’s unsurprising that we evolved to want it.
I hated low-fat low-sugar anything until I got serious about dieting. After not eating any of the high calorie stuff for a while, the low calorie stuff was actually a treat.
However, you can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat.
FYI: The zero carb strategy behind ketogenic and carnivore diets is to lower insulin response and encourage the body to metabolize primarily fat instead of carbs.
I recently ordered a buffalo steak at a local steakhouse, requesting “medium-rare and don’t trim the fat”. It tasted so good (especially the fat) I almost fainted.
Just crazy talk lol
What Mike K said. Our Ice Age, Neanderthal roots values such a diet. And until the mid 20th century it was still a priority for most humans.
Our Ice Age, Neanderthal roots values such a diet.
Correct! Or something very close to that. Stone Age humans were apex predators.
Learning to prefer? Casual observation of children’s first tastes of such things indicates to me that no learning is necessary. –neo
Agreed.
I wonder if this isn’t more leftism infecting science. The left emphasizes “nurture” (people are blank slates who can all be trained to be whatever equally) over “nature” (people have unequal genetic endowments which can be as important or more important than “nurture”).
It’s a sort of Lysenkoism — a disastrous Soviet scientific theory, claiming that acquired characteristics could be inherited, which crippled Soviet agriculture and led to thousands of scientists being executed, dismissed or imprisoned.
Belmont mentioned this already, but I wanted to second it: based on “crisps,” alone, if this was done in the UK, then “pudding” is probably not what we think of as pudding at all. I think it’s their catch all term for dessert, so it could have been referring to a decadent chocolate cake or ice cream sundae for all we know.
(Fair warning, I didn’t read the article)
what Mike K and Belmont said, though i may have to try the butter pecan and Kalua.
There may have been a lot fewer humans in the Stone Age too. Wonder why? Confounding ain’t it?
“Killed and et all them tasty critters and now we forced to eat roots and grains and vegetables. Bleah!” Neanderthal talks.
It’s clear that many people have a sugar addiction. This seems to say the same is true for fat, except that the high-fat foods usually taste better than the low-fat alternatives. Personally, I don’t like excessively sweet things, or even some moderately sweet things. This is probably the only reason I don’t resemble a blimp.
Round is a shape, as in I have to get in shape. 🙂
Kicking sugar was the hardest thing I did last year.
Though I didn’t entirely kick. I moved sugar to Cheat Day Sunday. I eat sugar and other forbidden things on Sunday, but not the rest of the week. On regular days I make up for sweet by hitting salty, sour and spicy hard. To the extent I can figure out “umami” I do that too.
It basically worked. My taste has shifted away from sweet. At first I would go crazy on Cheat Day with a litany of “puddings” I will not recite.
But isolated to one day, the roller coaster of sugar becomes clear. I feel great while eating a pudding, but I can only eat one and then I feel like crap for the rest of the day and into the next.
Now that’s what I think about when I think about puddings.
So how is it that the things that are supposed to be “good” for us generally don”t taste very good, while the things that are supposed to be “bad” for us generally taste a whole hell of a lot better?
Snow on Pine:
I think some things that are good for us taste great. Fruit, nuts, all sorts of meat, many vegetables. It’s just that when people developed, starvation was a real threat, and so we like densely caloric food, too. Survival mechanism. Food technology has concentrated the calories beyond what is found in nature, but we are still drawn to calorically dense food.
Sugar and other sweeteners are EXTREMELY addictive.
It’s not the fat that’s causing the problems, it’s the sweeteners (sugar, fructose, artificial sweeteners, they’re all problematic).
It’s not that those things are good for you, they aren’t. They are however a good source of quick energy for emergency times, which is why hibernating species gorge on fruits and roots.
If humans do the same they get diabetes, kidney problems, thyroid problems, obesity, etc. etc.
If you read some of the research about US government nutritional standards, Big Sugar went all-out on convincing government committees that fat was causing the increase in heart disease and diabetes. Turns out, as some people knew, the problem is sugar. To this study, trying to equate the effects of fat with sugar, I say, nice try.
I have found that salty things are somewhat addictive for me. I can’t have chips in the house.
Having enough to eat is a relatively recent occurrence. Fat tastes so good because it satiets you longer and that’s important when you may not know when you may have your next meal.
Kudos to Belmont for being the first to point out the ‘crisps’ anomaly. As much as I admire Maggie Thatcher, her professional career as a chemist was mostly devoted to developing low-fat ice cream, and for that sin I find it hard to forgive her.
‘Pudding’, as others have noted, is a Briticism referring not only to a dessert course but anything that ain’t ‘meat and two veg’. Yorkshire pudding, anyone?
Fats! I loves me some fats. Bacon fat is the reward one gets for cooking bacon. Poultry fat becomes schmaltz, schmeared on rye bread, with vodka, pickles, and sausage. Da bestest for frying potatoes. Sadly, beef tallow I find useless for cooking. Makes good candles, I’m told.
Not much on sweets. Keep some hard candies on hand to help cut back on my smoking, I guess that makes them medicinal. Like cooking ’em though. Just whomped up a mess of pancakes. Sweet potato with pecans, and apple spice. I don’t particularly care for pancakes, but dear sweet Jesus I do love to flip ’em. No spatula, flip that puppy inna the air and catch it in the skillet. I need to work on my James Brown moves.
The red states are the most obese. They have shortest lives.
Maybe hi fat foods are preferred because human beings evolved eating fat and protein; after all humans began using agriculture only about 10,000 years ago, well after humans had fully evolved.
Ahh yes. Pudding skin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP_ycNRcLTk
The title of this post says it all. Fat grams *are* taste grams.
We were all born with an innocent preference for cricket paste laced with grubworms, but Big Pharmapatriarchy tricked us into craving ribeyes and chocolate mousse.
It would appear to me that given our genome evolved predominantly in a feast famine environment — plentiful availability of food is too modern — preference for fatty stuff would be natural. But then if I believed that I would not be writing grants for projects that “indict” the food industry.
As a famous French chef on one of those TV cooking shows said, “flavor follows fat.”
they just want to take all the joy out of things, that kahlua and pecan ice cream, is one combo I hadn’t though of
“As a famous French chef on one of those TV cooking shows said, “flavor follows fat.””
Or as Garfield once stated to Jon when the latter decried “I wish there were a measure for taste”: “there is, it’s the calory” 🙂
Banned:
Just for you:
Putin’s Announcement That Russia Will Store Nuclear Weapons in Belarus Shows How Stupid He Thinks You Are
https://redstate.com/streiff/2023/03/26/putins-announcement-that-russia-will-store-nuclear-weapons-in-belarus-shows-how-stupid-he-thinks-you-are-n721811
“In short, this is just a propaganda move designed to generate fear of nuclear war among the profoundly stupid. The people excited about this announcement are just showing they haven’t followed anything going on between Russia and Belarus until Saturday. If Putin can mobilize enough watermelons to stop the transfer of DU tank ammunition, he wins. If he can’t, he’s just doing what he told the world he was going to do last June.”