Favorite food trumps satiety

Hunger hormone turns off the satiety in the favorite dish

05/05/2012

Who does not know that, with pizza, spaghetti or schnitzel many people continue to eat, even though they are already full. Many people simply can not stop eating at their favorite food. Scientists at the University of Naples have now succeeded in elucidating the context.

According to a recent food survey, pizza, pasta, Schnitzel and roulades are among the favorite dishes of Germans. Many can never get enough of it and sometimes eat until they get a stomach ache. „If there are roulades, I just can not stop eating“, reports Steffen W. Most people know this phenomenon and eat until they feel sick.

Eating to nausea
In the history of evolution, it has always been an unsolved mystery why man can overeat himself again if he tastes it extremely well. As a result, being overweight causes more calories to the body than it actually needs. But why do only humans have this problem and animals do not? After all, animals stop eating when they have eaten enough. You seem to have one „eating brake“, that tells you that's enough. A brake that people apparently lack in their favorite meal.

In humans, researchers call that „Food about hunger“ also as „hedonic hunger“. Hedonism is the unbridled indulgence of a certain desire. The consumption of food is not only to cover the daily calorie needs, but for the „Breastfeeding of pleasure and pleasure“.

Despite all the abundance and an approaching feeling of satiety, the human being is obviously eaten. This circumstance has now been studied by an Italian research team from the University of Naples / Italy. The team led by study director Palmiero Monteleone published its results for the first time in the journal "Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism".

Hunger hormone turns off saturation alert
The study involved exactly eight young people aged 21 and over. All subjects previously named their favorite foods and dishes that they particularly liked. In the first round, the participants were given their favorite food. They could eat as much as they wanted. In the second run, they should eat the not particularly well-liked food on another day. Before, after and during the meal, the subjects were sampled for blood. In the lab, the researchers examined the concentration of the hunger hormone ghrelin contained in the blood.

Using the samples and observations, the psychologists and physicians wanted to find out how the unbridled hunger arises. From a normal hunger to survival, which context can turn the desire for joy into a drive that gives people the opportunity to survive? „overeating“ leads? Probably the solution of the riddle is very simple. When people think or eat their favorite recipes, the concentration of the hunger hormone in the blood increases massively. Excessive secretion of the hormone simply trumps the natural feeling of fullness and almost completely shuts it off. Only when the warning mechanism nausea sets in, most people stop eating at their favorite food.

Discovered mechanism for obesity
The study results could provide further evidence for the problem of obesity. If the hormone secretion ghrelin were stopped, many people could be protected from the health hazard overweight. To secure the findings, however, requires further, larger-scale studies, as the researchers emphasize. (Sb)

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Picture: Helene Souza