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-   -   'This isn't just a behavioral problem': Study challenges the story on overeating (http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=483016)

JLx Wed, Sep-18-19 11:45

'This isn't just a behavioral problem': Study challenges the story on overeating
 
Quote:
The amount we eat when we eat too much is unrelated to pleasure, new research says
https://www.grandforksherald.com/li...y-on-overeating

People who are obese just like eating more than everyone else, right?

That's been the assumption anyway, that Americans overeat because we are getting so much darn pleasure from all the tasty, unhealthy foods in our path.

Films and books have been built around the idea that we overeat to get pleasure, including "Supersize Me" (2004) by documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, "The End of Overeating" (2010) by former FDA commissioner David Kessler and bestseller "Salt, Sugar, Fat" (2014) by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Michael Moss. They all deliver more or less the same message — that overeating is a national love affair with highly palatable foods, one some of us just can't quit.

It's so intrinsic to what we believe about eating that no one ever bothered to check it out. And it's wrong.

That's the finding of a surprising new National Institutes of Health-funded study out of Yale University this week on the deep-brain psychology of eating. As reported in a paper under review for the International Journal of Obesity, a team of scientists at the Modern Diet and Physiology Research Center in New Haven placed 110 subjects of differing weight in a functional MRI machine. They then fed them tasty milkshakes through straws. They then had them use a trackball to fill out a questionnaire considered "the gold standard instrument for how much people like things," said Dr. Dana Small, Ph.D., lead author.


On the MRI readout, researchers observed a reward circuit lighting up in the heaviest people, a familiar brain pathway that scientists had always assumed signaled pleasure. But on their questionnaire designed to test pleasure, the test subjects were reporting something else entirely. Specifically: "we found no evidence," the authors wrote, "for a relationship linking (obesity) and the perceived liking, wanting or intensity of the milkshakes." In other words, "the reason obese people are obese," says Small, "is not because they like food any more than anybody else. It's not because obese people are hedonists."

Small, who studies the neuroscience of taste and perception, said testing the question of pleasure and eating has been on her mind for some time.

"One thing I had noticed in my experience since the mid 1990s is that I had failed to find evidence for conscious perceptions of liking, for pleasure," said Small, who is professor of psychiatry and psychology at Yale. "I had failed to observe in my work or other people's work evidence that there's a relationship with obesity.."

Instead of pleasure, Small says overeating is likely triggered by unconscious processes, metabolic signals carrying the body's perception of the energetic value of a food based on prior experience. These signals can cause conditioning within the brain over time. The study adds fuel to a debate dividing obesity research into two camps.

On one side is a long-running "junk food" line of thought, whereby clinicians assert that some foods are just too tasty. On the other side, clinicians say sugar and carbohydrates trigger insulin, and this locks away energy, creating a state of perpetual messages signaling hunger. The first is a conscious process, while the second is unconscious. Small believes both are happening at the same time.


"I believe that the dichotomy is not accurate. A lot of these metabolic signals actually (change) the brain's response to the food, and that determines how reinforcing it is. The two systems are integrated." Also, she says, most animals base their eating decision on unconscious drives that do not include pleasure.

"These are very old brain systems, and are working differently with modern energy-dense foods. ... Everyone will say and I will say it as well: avoid processed foods, that's the simple lesson. There's more and more research saying it's not the nutrients itself, the problem is having foods that our physiology is not evolved for. They are kind of super strong rewards."

"I thought it was a great study," said Jocelyn Lebow, Ph.D., a psychologist who treats eating disorders at Mayo Clinic. "In this culture there's a pervasive belief people with obesity are that way because of some sort of personal failing, and that the rest of us are disciplined while they are gluttons who can't resist the same urges.

"It gives us the green light to be shaming and critical of people who are in larger bodies. It also stops us from asking the right questions. We go down the road of trying the same interventions that we know don't work. We know 95-98 percent of diets fail and so we say, 'well you must not have done it well enough.' We're not researching the things that matter. There are other mechanisms at work. This isn't just a behavioral problem."


I knew someone once who lost her sense of taste temporarily. She said she still continued to overeat. Seemed weird to me at the time.

rightnow Wed, Sep-18-19 18:56

Thanks JLx, it always seems amazing to me that the world of mainstream science acts like they are shocked, shocked I tell you that hormones and food ingredients have anything to do with human eating behavior. It's been no secret for centuries for farm animals.

PJ

jschwab Wed, Sep-18-19 19:10

Quote:
Originally Posted by rightnow
Thanks JLx, it always seems amazing to me that the world of mainstream science acts like they are shocked, shocked I tell you that hormones and food ingredients have anything to do with human eating behavior. It's been no secret for centuries for farm animals.

PJ


I remember when I started to get interested in agriculture and started reading about animal husbandry. And, lordy, why don't people get the same concepts for humans, indeed? It's total cognitive dissonance.

Ms Arielle Wed, Sep-18-19 20:53

Hogs are fed corn.....

I will never look at an ear of corn the same way EVER again.....

M Levac Wed, Sep-18-19 21:49

Quote:
Instead of pleasure, Small says overeating is likely triggered by unconscious processes, metabolic signals carrying the body's perception of the energetic value of a food based on prior experience. These signals can cause conditioning within the brain over time. The study adds fuel to a debate dividing obesity research into two camps.

Correct. No opposition to this. Hormones carry signals. Tissues, including the brain, then obey the signals accordingly. But the next part of her statement "carrying the body's perception of yada yada" is completely wrong. It's wrong because it presumes some ability to carry quantity/quality information of some sort. There's no such form of information in the signals hormones carry. The hormones are the signals themselves.

A good analogy of what she said is data packets, where each packet contains some information beyond its own means to be received. Hormones carry no such thing. Instead, the quantity/quality information is directly proportional to the absolute quantity of the hormone molecules, then of the receptor sensitivity, then of modulators. In common parlance, we're talking the level of a hormone, as in blood insulin level and so forth.

For the behavior conditioning part, there's no doubt that hormones are involved. However, for conditioning to occur, external stimuli must be present, hormones alone are insufficient. Conversely, conditioning also occurs without excess fat accumulation. We've been conditioned to eat a bunch of crap, we've also conditioned ourselves to eat genuine food.

Quote:
"I believe that the dichotomy is not accurate. A lot of these metabolic signals actually (change) the brain's response to the food, and that determines how reinforcing it is. The two systems are integrated." Also, she says, most animals base their eating decision on unconscious drives that do not include pleasure.

Maybe. Food is the cause, metabolic signals is the effect. There's no way to reverse this causality. However, hunger is also the cause, while eating is the effect, and hunger is driven by metabolic signals. A reinforcement either way results from the nature of the stuff we consume as a consequence of hunger. If it's genuine food, satisfaction is ensured and this gets reinforced. If it's crap, disappointement is ensured and this gets reinforced instead. We see this all the time when we first go low-carb after years of eating crap. Finally, I'm satisfied with a reasonable meal, instead of being hungry all the time.

The amplitude of reinforcement, i.e. "how reinforcing it is", is a whole nother topic. Two monkeys in a cage. We cannot say that either monkey's behavior is reinforced more strongly than the other, since both monkey's behavior appear to get reinforced equally with equally significant consequences. The one who gets his dose every time pushes the button only when he's driven to, and the dose satisfies every time. The one who gets his dose only once in a while pushes the button continuously also only when he's driven to, but he's continuously driven to because satisfaction never comes. Going low-carb after years of eating crap, we're finally put into that cage where we get our dose every time, satisfaction finally comes, we can now push the button and rely on a satisfactory dose every time. All the while though we're fighting old habits of reaching for that cake.

Personally, I once ate a big mac and suddenly realized it tasted like saw dust.

-edit- It just occurs to me that satisfaction may be a stronger reinforcement effect compared to disappointement. Maybe.

Calianna Thu, Sep-19-19 12:20

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ms Arielle
Hogs are fed corn.....

I will never look at an ear of corn the same way EVER again.....



With the trend towards leaner (tasteless) pork, they've generally cut way down on the amount of grain they feed hogs, because they KNOW all those extra carbs makes them gain more fat. (when was the last time you saw a well marbled pork chop?) Instead, the hogs are being fed more fat and protein to make them leaner.



But humans? No, they insist we NEED our grains, loads and loads of them, every single day of our lives, more grains than humans have ever eaten before.





Then they turn around and blame us for gaining weight, because we eat too much fat. :bash:

Merpig Tue, Sep-24-19 14:20

Quote:
Originally Posted by Calianna
With the trend towards leaner (tasteless) pork, they've generally cut way down on the amount of grain they feed hogs, because they KNOW all those extra carbs makes them gain more fat. (when was the last time you saw a well marbled pork chop?) Instead, the hogs are being fed more fat and protein to make them leaner.
I almost never even eat pork anymore it's so dry and tough and tasteless, and almost no fat. Nothing at all like the fatty, juicy porkchops I remember from my childhood! They were yummy and the fat would just melt in your mouth.

Meme#1 Tue, Sep-24-19 14:41

You have to look for the fatty chops, I find them but I have to look, usually the cheapest price of all pork.....then there's bacon which I live on daily.

Merpig Tue, Sep-24-19 14:52

Quote:
Originally Posted by Meme#1
You have to look for the fatty chops, I find them but I have to look, usually the cheapest price of all pork.....then there's bacon which I live on daily.
Haha, yes, can't go wrong with bacon ;) But fatty pork chops? None of the grocery stores anywhere near me ever have them. No clue where else to look!

Verbena Tue, Sep-24-19 16:47

We have a new vender at our weekly farmers' market this year. He raises Mangalitza pigs, the "lard pig" of Hungary. https://www.dartagnan.com/mangalica...itage-pork.html
The meat is delicious, and the lard is lovely. Not cheap, but I treat myself every few weeks to some. And he almost gave me the kidney fat to render into lard as he had so much of it, and not a lot of demand. Same with the kidneys; nobody else has expressed any interest in buying them :-)

ETA: The link above is just to explain and show what the pigs are like. This is not my local farmer or his pigs.

Dodger Tue, Sep-24-19 17:25

Pork shoulder and the cuts from them are still fatty.

BeachDonna Tue, Sep-24-19 20:05

Going slightly off topic:
Pork shoulder...fatty yumminess! I made a "1/2 picnic roast" in the crock pot today; salt, pepper, garlic and onion powder, crocked all day and shredded. So yummy. I can eat it so many ways: with the juice over caulimash, with salsa, quac and queso, tossed with sauteed spinach and onion, tossed with sauteed bell peppers and onion, tossed with sauteed zucchini and a bit of tomato sauce, etc. The juice is filled with collagen from the skin and goodness from the bone. So good.

And now back to our regularly scheduled topic...

Ms Arielle Tue, Sep-24-19 20:53

Quote:
Originally Posted by Calianna
With the trend towards leaner (tasteless) pork, they've generally cut way down on the amount of grain they feed hogs, because they KNOW all those extra carbs makes them gain more fat. (when was the last time you saw a well marbled pork chop?) Instead, the hogs are being fed more fat and protein to make them leaner.


Yes. It's a corn -soybean based pellet. 50% protein from SB is far too high in protein, so it's mixed with corn, 1:2 ish ratio SB to corn depending on other cheap grains in the mix.


Hogs today are FAR leaner than the lard hogs. Love the pics in old Ag books.

Time to bring back the lard hogs. Or the pot bellied pigs for the family farms.

Meme#1 Tue, Sep-24-19 23:41

Quote:
Originally Posted by Verbena
We have a new vender at our weekly farmers' market this year. He raises Mangalitza pigs, the "lard pig" of Hungary. https://www.dartagnan.com/mangalica...itage-pork.html
The meat is delicious, and the lard is lovely. Not cheap, but I treat myself every few weeks to some. And he almost gave me the kidney fat to render into lard as he had so much of it, and not a lot of demand. Same with the kidneys; nobody else has expressed any interest in buying them :-)

ETA: The link above is just to explain and show what the pigs are like. This is not my local farmer or his pigs.



Verbena, you always have the best tips. I'm in love with everything
on that web-site! :yum: :yum: :yum:

deirdra Wed, Sep-25-19 09:33

Methinks that in the olden days "lard pigs/hogs" were just called "pigs" or "hogs".


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