Health
Related: About this forumThe Brain: Our Food-Traffic Controller
IMAGINE that, instead of this article, you were staring at a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. The mere sight and smell of them would likely make your mouth water. The first bite would be enough to wake up brain areas that control reward, pleasure and emotion and perhaps trigger memories of when you tasted cookies like these as a child.
That first bite would also stimulate hormones signaling your brain that fuel was available. The brain would integrate these diverse messages with information from your surroundings and make a decision as to what to do next: keep on chewing, gobble down the cookie and grab another, or walk away.
Studying the complex brain response to such sweet temptations has offered clues as to how we might one day control a profound health problem in the country: the obesity epidemic.
The answer may partly lie in a primitive brain region called the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus, which monitors the bodys available energy supply, is at the center of the brains snack-food signal processing. It keeps track of how much long-term energy is stored in fat by detecting levels of the fat-derived hormone leptin and it also monitors the bodys levels of blood glucose, minute-to-minute, along with other metabolic fuels and hormones that influence satiety. When you eat a cookie, the hypothalamus sends out signals that make you less hungry. Conversely, when food is restricted, the hypothalamus sends signals that increase your desire to ingest high-calorie foods. The hypothalamus is also wired to other brain areas that control taste, reward, memory, emotion and higher-level decision making. These brain regions form an integrated circuit that was designed to control the drive to eat. . .
Blood flow and activity in brain areas controlling appetite, emotion and reward decreased after consuming a drink with glucose, and participants reported greater feelings of fullness. In contrast, after drinking fructose, the brain appetite and reward areas continued to stay active, and participants did not report feeling full.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/the-brain-our-food-traffic-controller.html?hp
BethanyQuartz
(193 posts)"Blood flow and activity in brain areas controlling appetite, emotion and reward decreased after consuming a drink with glucose, and participants reported greater feelings of fullness. In contrast, after drinking fructose, the brain appetite and reward areas continued to stay active, and participants did not report feeling full."
elleng
(130,865 posts)will edit.
Thanks
kickysnana
(3,908 posts)I knew this. I cannot eat a piece of fruit alone if I am hungry as it makes me hungrier and I have been pooh-poohed for years about it.
BethanyQuartz
(193 posts)If you separate out glucose and fructose you get two different results. Glucose satiated while fructose didn't. However it also seems to be saying many foods have both glucose and fructose in them together.