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Can Brain Be Trained To Like Healthy Foods? Besides lack of physical activities, the issues of overweight and obesity are always tied to the type of foods one eats. Many junk foods that can cause weight gain or even obese are often delicious and most people just cannot give them a miss. Remember this, overweight and obesity are risk factors for developing many medical disorders including heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and stroke. Research has shown that eating too much junk food is like any other addiction. People’s brain can simply change after years of consuming high-calorie, highly processed foods. They will prefer pizza and fries instead of salads and grilled chicken. It has long been thought that once the brain changed, it could be permanent. But a recent study showed that it might be possible to actually alter how the brain reacts to high-calorie and low-calorie foods by changing one’s eating behaviors. The participants in the study could just do away the habit of indulging junk foods after 6 months of healthy eating. In order to determine whether participants in a weight-loss program called idiet no longer craved junk food, the researchers at Tufts University shortlisted 13 overweight or obese adults to undergo fMRI. These participants were divided into 2 groups: a control group of 5 participants who ate regularly and an experimental group of 8 who were enrolled in idiet, a behavioral intervention program that included portion-controlled menus and support group session. Their findings were published September 1, 2014 in ‘Nutrition & Diabetes.’ iDiet simply allows a menu of comfort foods such as lasagna, swapping healthier ingredients like whole-wheat pasta or lower-fat substitutions. It also encourages complex carbohydrate, fruits, and vegetables instead of calorie-dense foods, and limits the daily calories intake: between 500 and 1,000.
Both groups underwent an fMRI at the start and end of the study. The purpose was to record their brain activity in response to photos of both healthy (like a turkey sandwich on wheat bread) and unhealthy foods (like a container of French fries). In this way, the researchers could examine how the participants’ brains responded to these photos, particularly in the striatum, which is a region known to be linked to the brain’s reward center. Previous studies have found that high-calorie, fatty, sugary foods trigger the pleasure center of the brain. This cause people to crave these unhealthy foods and expected to be rewarded with dopamine for eating them. During the initial scan, the reward center in both groups sparked with activity when they looked at images of high-calorie foods. After 6 months, however, the experimental group demonstrated excitement in the reward center when they saw low-calorie foods. Their brain’s circuitry had changed after 6 months of healthy eating, and the change could simply occur as early as 2 weeks into the program. But the same did not hold true for the control group. Furthermore, the participants in the experimental group lost an average of 14.1 pounds each while those in the control group gained almost 5 pounds on average. Restrictive diets, according to researchers, often fail because people feel hungry or because people miss eating favorite foods. When people are told to be hungry and to eat food they do not like, their unconscious brain often tells them to do otherwise. While the researchers were excited with results, they admitted that they would need more studies that would involve many more participants, have long-term follow-up and investigate more areas of the brain. They were also unclear if other diets would yield the same brain changes. That is why Tufts University is starting a comparative study to learn more. Some health experts not involving in the study felt that the results might help them get someone switching from unhealthy to healthy foods. The study also highlighted the difficulty in getting someone to lose weight because of hormones, genetics, lifestyle, environment, sleep quality, and taste bud preference, and the brain’s role in it.
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