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from the Who-ever-binged-on-BAD-tasting-food? dept.
Does eating good-tasting food make you gain weight? Despite the common perception that good-tasting food is unhealthy and causes obesity, new research from the Monell Center using a mouse model suggests that desirable taste in and of itself does not lead to weight gain.
"Most people think that good-tasting food causes obesity, but that is not the case. Good taste determines what we choose to eat, but not how much we eat over the long-term," said study senior author Michael Tordoff, PhD, a physiological psychologist at Monell.
Researchers who study obesity have long known that laboratory rodents fed a variety of tasty human foods, such as chocolate chip cookies, potato chips and sweetened condensed milk, avidly overeat the good-tasting foods and become obese.
These studies have provided support for the common belief that tasty food promotes overeating and ensuing weight gain. However, because no study had separated the positive sensory qualities of the appetizing foods from their high sugar and fat content, it was impossible to know if the taste was actually driving the overeating.
The French live by the theory of eating smaller portions of richer, better-tasting food.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday December 18 2016, @08:09PM
The summary doesn't make clear what this study ACTUALLY did, nor do the claims made by the researchers exactly follow from their method. Since I actually clicked on the link (I know, I know...), let me briefly say what the study DID show.
-- They fed groups of lab mice three diets: (1) plain food, (2) plain food with added sucralose (zero-calorie sweetener, creating "sweet" taste), (3) plain food with added mineral oil (zero-calorie oil, creates "fatty" taste).
-- The mice preferred to eat (2) or (3) over (1), so they re-ran the experiment with new mice and gave three different groups one of those three types of food. The mice from groups (2) and (3) did not gain more weight than the group which ate (1).
Although it's not explained well, I would guess the theory being tested here is that somehow if food tastes better, it automatically makes us desire to overeat, thereby potentially leading to obesity. The mice show this apparently doesn't happen -- even though mice prefer the "enhanced" flavor of their foods, it doesn't make them consume more calories.
Of course, the problem with all of this is that most "natural" foods that taste sweet or fatty ARE higher in calories. So if we consume a similar amount of food with added sweetener or added fat (which we seem genetically programmed to seek out, from the days when hominids were not guaranteed steady food sources, and any extra calories were good), we probably ARE eating more calories... which could make us fatter.
Thus, I'd say the headline is a bit misleading. Yes, the taste of food itself doesn't necessarily cause overconsumption of calories. But "good flavors" are often correlated with extra calories, so saying "good tasting FOOD does not cause weight gain" isn't right. What the study really says is that "Better TASTE or FLAVOR does not -- in itself -- cause weight gain," though the food may very well cause weight gain.