Don’ shop when hungry!
Scientists have found out that ghrelin, a hormone released when we are hungry, makes food look more tasty.
The “hunger hormone” also improves our ability to notice individual items of food - and to remember them.
Researcher Alain Dagher, a neurologist at McGill University in Montreal, used sophisticated brain scans to look at the effect of ghrelin on healthy young men.
He found that giving the men ghrelin led to parts of the brain responsible for feelings of pleasure lighting up more when shown pictures of burgers and pizza than when shown photos of landscapes.
The men given ghrelin were also better able to pick put the images they had seen when presented with selection of food pictures at the end of the experiment.
Dr Dagher said: “We’ve found that it is ghrelin that acts on the brain to make food more appealing. It influences not only visual processing but also memory. People remembered the food pictures better when ghrelin was high.”
Importantly, the pattern of brain activity showed similarities to that found in drug addiction, the journal Cell Metabolism reports.
With previous studies showing that ghrelin drives us to eat more calories than we would otherwise, this suggests some junk food addicts may be firmly under the hormone’s spell.
If ghrelin can be suppressed it might become easier to fight obesity.
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