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You Really May Be Addicted to That Chocolate Cake

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who say they are addicted to chocolate or pizza may not be exaggerating, U.S.-based scientists said on Tuesday.

A brain scan study of normal, hungry people showed their brains lit up when they saw and smelled their favorite foods in much the same way as the brains of cocaine addicts when they think about their next snort.

"Food presentation significantly increased metabolism in the whole brain (by 24 percent) and these changes were largest in superior temporal, anterior insula, and orbitofrontal cortices," they wrote.

These areas are associated with addiction. For instance, the orbitofrontal cortex has been seen to activate in cocaine users when they think about the drug.

The study, published in the April issue of the journal NeuroImage, may support the argument that food advertising is helping drive the U.S. obesity epidemic.

"These results could explain the deleterious effects of constant exposure to food stimuli, such as advertising, candy machines, food channels, and food displays in stores," Dr. Gene-Jack Wang of Brookhaven National Laboratory (news - web sites) in Upton, New York, who led the study, said in a statement.

"The high sensitivity of this brain region to food stimuli, coupled with the huge number and variety of these stimuli in the environment, likely contributes to the epidemic of obesity in this country."

An estimated 30 percent of Americans are obese, meaning they have a body mass index of more than 30. This ratio of height to weight usually works out to being about 30 pounds (14 kg) overweight for a woman and 35 to 40 pounds (16 to 18 kg) overweight for a man.

Wang and colleagues studied 12 men and women with an average age of 28. The volunteers fasted for just under a day and then underwent positron emission tomography, or PET scans, which measure brain metabolism.

They were asked to describe their favorite foods and how they like to eat them while they were presented with some of those foods.

"A cotton swab impregnated with the food was placed in their tongues so they could taste it," the researchers wrote.

"The favorite food items most frequently selected by the subjects were bacon-egg-cheese sandwich, cinnamon bun, pizza, hamburger with cheese, fried chicken, lasagna, Bar-Be-Que rib, ice cream, brownie, and chocolate cake."

Several leading addiction experts worked on the report including Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

(Source) - http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... ravings_dc
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Coke Launching Mid-Calorie Cola

ATLANTA - Coke is launching a mid-calorie cola that promises half the sugar, carbohydrates and calories of its regular version.

The Atlanta-based company said Monday that Coca-Cola C2 will debut first in Japan and then the United States this summer.

The company has been researching the idea for a year.

There will be subtle packaging differences to distinguish between the new drink and the company's flagship brand.

In January, PepsiCo Inc. said it, too, was looking at the idea of selling a mid-calorie cola. At the time, spokesman Dave DeCecco said the Purchase, N.Y.-based company had applied for a patent for Pepsi LS, which some have speculated stands for low sugar. The company later named its mid-calorie cola Pepsi Edge and said it would debut in the United States this summer, roughly the same time as Coke's version, DeCecco said Monday.

Cadbury Schweppes hinted at an industry conference in New York in December that it is looking at a lower-calorie version of Dr Pepper.

(Source) - http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... lorie_cola

not surprising on either count, but the former was interesting to have confirmed

Aye.

How is what the former article describing any different from conditioning? I can think of pretty much anything I like to do (such as eating good foods) and I'll probably end up wanting to do it. I think the press is throwing in the cocaine addiction analogy just for shock value, more than anything else.

I bet that part of the brain lights up when they think about beating it off too.

seriously, I think they put drugs in those Hardies ThickBergers... Those are just WAY too damn good.... mmm.. yummy....

you guys are right.

all this information is old news, we've known about the brain's stimulis to "things it wants" for ages. it involves the reward pathways for merely THINKING or visualising a particular food (or an enjoyable drug like coccaine). this is why you salivate, your brain is preparing you to seek, and then eat this food.
if your brain didn't do this "rewarding of thinking about food", we would all stave. all animals (well mammals anyway) are the same in this regard. we all feel good (and it reminds us that we are hungry!) when we think about food (also when we eat food).

it makes sense for our brains to have this phychological addiction to food, since we all inheret a physical addiction to it when we are disconnected from the unbilical cord .

interestingly however obese people's brains DO release greater amounts of these "reward" chemicals when they think about food (than normal people).

i forget exactly what neurochemical is released by the thought of food, but it gives a pleasent sensation. i think it may be endorphin.

Old news. Pavlov's experiments proved classical conditioning theories ages ago.

I wonder about the half-calorie drinks though with regard to their quality. Usually the slogan goes "half the fat, half the flavor," so we'll have to see.

I'd like a low cal low shuger Dr. Pepper. My favorite drink.