Your Brain on Potato Chips

Or, more accurately, a rat's brain on potato chips. Last week, PLoS One published a very interesting paper by Dr. Tobias Hoch and colleagues on what happens in a rat's brain when it is exposed to a highly palatable/rewarding food (1). Rats, like humans, overconsume highly palatable foods even when they're sated on less palatable foods (2), and feeding rats a variety of palatable human junk foods is one of the most effective ways to fatten them (3). Since the brain directs all behaviors, food consumption is an expression of brain activity patterns. So what is the brain activity pattern that leads to the overconsumption of a highly palatable and rewarding food?

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Salt Sugar Fat

I'd just like to put in a quick word for a book that will be released tomorrow, titled Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, by Pulitzer prize-winning author Michael Moss.  This is along the same lines as Dr. David Kessler's book The End of Overeating, which explains how the food industry uses food reward, palatability, and food cues to maximize sales-- and as an unintended side effect, maximize our waistlines.   Judging by Moss's recent article in New York Times Magazine, which I highly recommend reading, the book will be excellent.  I've pre-ordered it.