The secret of the appeal of potato chips, chocolate and peanut butter unveiled

Monika Pischetsrieder and colleagues at the University of Erlangen in Germany have found that rats, with a choice, gravitate towards foods with a certain combination of fats and carbohydrates. The magic formula is 50 to 35, that is, food that contains 35% fat and 50% carbohydrates. And this almost completely coincides with potato chips, chocolate and peanut butter. This study was published March 17 in the journal Nature . In the process of evolution, the body has learned to accumulate as many calories as possible “for a rainy day.” The brain releases dopamine when it receives calories, encouraging the absorption of nutritious food. On this basis, and against the background of the availability of food, some people develop a tendency to overeat, leading to obesity. Scientists call this phenomenon ” hedonic hyperphagia ” – a tendency to absorb food, not associated with the need to replenish energy reserves.  

Monika Pischetsrieder and colleagues at the University of Erlangen in Germany have found that rats, with a choice, gravitate towards foods with a certain combination of fats and carbohydrates. The magic formula is 50 to 35, that is, food that contains 35% fat and 50% carbohydrates. And this almost completely coincides with potato chips, chocolate and peanut butter. This study was published March 17 in the journal Nature . In the process of evolution, the body has learned to accumulate as many calories as possible “for a rainy day.” The brain releases dopamine when it receives calories, encouraging the absorption of nutritious food. It is on this basis and against the background of the availability of food in some people a tendency to overeat, leading to obesity. Scientists call this phenomenon ” hedonic hyperphagia ” – a tendency to absorb food, not associated with the need to replenish energy reserves.

The rats happily devoured food with the magic 50:35 formula. Most of the test subjects ate half their daily allowance in one sitting. It is known that carbohydrates are very “fast” calories, which the body immediately converts into energy. There are more calories per unit of fat mass, but they are more difficult to extract, and they are used “in reserve”. Most likely, in the course of evolution, it turned out that the combination “50 to 35” is the most energetically effective.

Human is not a rat, but most people really can’t resist eating chips and eating all of them whole in an open bag. Chocolate is also known not only as a satiety agent, but also as a food to quickly raise the mood – apparently, the brain rewards its owner for the supply of energy in the right proportion.

local_offerevent_note December 14, 2020

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