A new study has found that there is such a thing as the brain's calorie counter, which explains why the brain has a tendency to choose junk food over healthier one, as it's attempting to fill a quota. The discovery of the brain's calorie counter explains the body's need for fatty foods, beyond the fact that these types of meals are cheaper.
According to Science Daily, there was a study in McGill University called "Behavioral and Neural Valuation of Foods Is Driven by Implicit Knowledge of Caloric Content" and published in the Psychological Science scientific magazine, that proves that food consumption decisions aren't only based on taste, but also on the brain's calorie counter.
The brain's calorie counter became apparent in the study, which went as follows: the scientists performed brain scans on healthy participants as they were asked to examine pictures of different foods, varying in caloric content. They rated which of the foods they were more interested in consuming, and they were asked to estimate the number of calories in each of them - and it seems their choices and willingness to pay were still on the side of the ones with higher caloric content, even when they knew this.
"Earlier studies found that children and adults tend to choose high-calorie food," said author Alain Dagher according to Eureka Alert. "The easy availability and low cost of high-calorie food has been blamed for the rise in obesity. Their consumption is largely governed by the anticipated effects of these foods, which are likely learned through experience."
The results of the brain scans showed that the part of the brain that activated during the samplings was the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is an area known to encode the value of stimuli and predict immediate consumption - and it was also correlated with the foods' true caloric content.
Now that scientists know that there is a kind of brain calorie counter, further measures could be applied in regards of the obesity epidemic.
