If you see food, you get hungry

Study: If you see food, you get an appetite

16/01/2012

Even the sight of food triggers hunger. This was announced by the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry on Monday. The cause of the feeling of hunger is the hormone ghrelin, whose release is triggered by optical stimuli.

Optical stimuli lead to appetite-inducing hormone secretion
What many people have long been clear, has now been scientifically proven: Already the sight of delicious food arouses hunger. The hormone ghrelin is responsible for this. It acts as a main regulator of eating behavior as well as food utilization.

The study looked at how young men respond to images of tasty foods or non-edible objects. For this, the concentration of various hormones responsible for the regulation of food intake in the blood was measured. The scientists found that ghrelin concentration increased when looking at pictures of delicious food. They explained that the omnipresent presentation of appetizing foods, for example in advertising, could contribute to weight gain in the Western world.

Petra Schüssler from the Max Planck Institute reports on the results of the study: „A mechanism that could lead us to eat a piece of cake just two hours after breakfast.“ The scientist advises overweight people to avoid looking at appropriate foods as much as possible.

Most people know their real hunger
Last year, an online survey on hunger and nutrition was launched via the Internet portal "www.echte-esser.de". 84 percent of respondents said that contrary to the assumption of the German Nutrition Society (DGE), many people had lost access to the feeling of hunger to know their real hunger.

Due to the abundant supply of food and the omnipresent, manipulative advertising in industrialized countries, the population is often assumed to have lost access to the feeling of hunger. (Ag)

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