Fatty foods excite brain’s pleasure center

British scientists said eating fat lights up pleasure centers of the brain, which might help explain why people cannot get enough of certain foods.

British scientists said eating fat lights up pleasure centers of the brain, which might help explain why people cannot get enough of certain foods. The researchers, at the University of Oxford, placed 12 hungry people inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine and fed them differently textured foods through a tube, the online version of the British journal Nature reported. They watched subjects’ reactions as they consumed mixtures of tasteless cellulose tailored to the consistencies of water, corn oil or runny syrup, as well as a mouthful of vegetable oil. The thicker solutions triggered a brain area that partly overlaps with one known to be activated by taste, the researchers said, which suggests the brain builds a picture of what is in the mouth based on both taste and texture. Fatty mixtures fired up an extra brain region called the cingulate cortex, which is tickled by other pleasurable experiences such as a caress, a perfumed scent or winning money. The discovery reinforces the idea that a dab of butter or dollop of cream makes dinner all the more appealing. It is still not clear, however, they said, how the mouth manages to detect these textural differences. (Source: United Press International, April 2004)