Fatty foods tell your brain to be happy

Fatty foods tell your brain to be happy
PHOTO: Fatty foods tell your brain to be happy

A team of Belgian scientists claimed they found out the reason why emotionally stressed people stretch out for sweet junk food.

Comfort from absorbing fatty foods is not just derived from the pleasant experience of eating but also through gut-brain signalling, said scientists from University of Leuven.

The study is published in August version of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

They conducted a research about effects of fatty foods on emotion by taking MRI scans of different kinds of subjects.

In the research, twelve participants listened to sad music and watched depressing images. After that, some of them were injected with fat acids while others were given saline solution.

Although they were not given any information about component of each liquid, the formal group was only half as depressed compared to the latter.

"Eating fat seems to make us less vulnerable to sad emotions, even if we don't know we're eating fat," Lukas van Oudenhove told medical news HealthDay.

"We bypassed sensory simulation by infusing fatty acids directly into the stomach, without the subjects knowing whether they were getting fat or saline," he added.

The team believed that the study will have an impact on future studies of obesity, eating disorders, and depression, although further research is needed.

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