Overweight People Don't Enjoy Food?

This is an interesting study and it does make sense. Thanks for the info.

Question: could it me that it was overconsumption of these foods in the first place that desensitised the overweight subjects to the pleasures of eating them? It's well known that first-time drug users get a bigger buzz out of certain drugs than regular users - and some foods have been shown to activate similar pleasure centres in the brain as drugs...

I eat foods that do not have much flavor. Like oatmeal and cottage cheese. It is called self control.

There was an article on this study on the front page of my morning newspaper. It was suggested that if you train kids young enough to never acquire a taste for sweet treats like milkshakes and ho ho's, that even if they are predisposed to obesity, they won't reach for those items because they've been trained to eat healthier choices. All good, but adults can be trained too. I love french fries and potato chips. I have trained myself not to eat them because they make me fat and unhealthy. If I eat them now, I feel sick. The study was also done on teens and yound adults under age 23...wondering what they would have discovered with older adults who have aging brain chemistry and in many cases, less of a sweet tooth?

I think the changes in behavior would begin with an awareness that you don't get as much pleasure out of food. Before you could truly change behavior, you'd have to change your way of thinking about food. Perhaps anyone overly affected by this lack of satiation could begin to think of food as fuel and look for higher degrees of personal satisfaction elsewhere...in a hobby or craft, perhaps.

Very interesting take on the issue, I'm not sure that I completely agree but it does make sense. Maybe if you don't get as much pleasure you won't eat as much. Here is an interesting post I found on Peterman's Eye about food and gluttony, take a look!
http://www.petermanseye.com/anthologies/what-was-learned/280-the-girth-of-a-nation

Ok, first of all, that picture doesn't help me out... It looks way toooo yummy ;)

Great article, I do wonder however, like others have pointed - which came first? The Chicken or the egg? Can the lack of receptors be a result of being "trained" early in life? As a hypnotherapist I tend to go with that scenario as I've seen what "training" can do to a young mind.

The body is properly putting up stop signals for appetite, but for psychological reasons, the "fatties" are blowing through all of the red lights at high speed. The fact that there are multiple stop signals for appetite to begin with (OB gene, leptin, etc), suggests a historic tendency for people to ignore at least some of them. Why else would there be such redundancy? In other words, humans have a tendency to be biological scofflaws. Many don't listen to our bodies as much as a socialized psychological agenda.

Smokers experiece a similar effect, also. Nicotine increases the level of dopamine in the brain, accounting for the pleasurable effect the smoker experiences when lighting up. When smokers quit, the drop in dopamine levels, besides causing cravings for more smoking, crosses over to other areas, and ex-smokers often experience weight gain. Unfortunately smokers often mistakenly conclude smoking "causes" weight loss, when in fact smoking only causes weight gain by screwing up their dopamine production. People susceptible to such "pleasure mirages" will end up over-eating as well.

Oreos & chocolate chips cookies DO taste better when you eat then less frequently.
They're a treat, not an everyday treat, but a fun treat.

I guess it's kinda like after a while drug junkies don't get 'high' off the narcotics anymore, it just gets them to normal.

In my experience, it always seems like the first few bites of anything really rich are always the best bites. After that, you don't really taste what you're eating anymore; or at the very least, you don't taste it as much. I remember when I was heavy and I'd eat a whole pack of Chips Ahoy cookies while writing a paper...I don't think I really tasted much after about cookie number 3, yet I kept on mowing through the entire box.

I stopped eating things like that and now, just a little bit of anything very sweet really satisfies me. But it's not like I just rely on my taste buds to tell me "Ok, you've had enough"...I count out 2 cookies or a couple of pieces of chocolate and I'm done with them. It's definitely a conscious effort to control my eating.

Great article. I think that so many people like myself, are looking for the magic diet that will reverse years of bad eating habits in an instant. After years of unseccussful diets I realized that most of these diets lead to starvation and in turn failure. What I have found is that by allowing myself to eat more throughout the day, that I am less likely to over indulge in foods that are otherwise bad for me. When I eat more throughout the day, I don't feel deprived and I am also more likely to pass on food that I will regret later.

This is a really interesting study, I'd never thought of their being a chemical explanation - I just thought that as a previously fat person, it was because I was so busy wolfing down my food that I never really actually tasted it - I more like vaporized it which is hardly a way to experience satisfaction from it.

That is an amazing study. I would have never guessed that there was a relationship between our size and the foods we crave.

This really makes sense to me. Overweight people who do not have a physical condition which causes or contributes to their weight eat for many reasons. Emotional eating is the most prevalent that I am familiar with, having it myself. While becoming aware of the reasons why I ate, I realized that most times I eat without even being aware of eating, much less the taste or feel of the food. I would be hungry for a candy bar, take a bite, get busy, reach for another bite and the candy bar was gone. If I couldn't remember eating the candy bar, how could I have enjoyed it.

It makes a lot of sense. Try to eat a lot and then you will notice for yourself that your taste buds are numb. Satisfaction for food differs a lot. One may enjoy sweets while others love bitters.

I totally agree that bad eating habits can be unlearned.
I used to eat a lot of fast food, like McDonalds & KFC,
and junk food, but after I was introduced to fruit & vegetables, I became a vegetarian, and now I only occasionally eat sweets, mostly jelly snakes & a hot chocolate made with soy milk, without cream or marshmallows as a treat.
For me, it's not a diet, but a way of life, consciously chosen and I feel better for it.

It all comes down to personal choice, wise judgement and
the correct food choices.

So much of the summary is not objective. What actual percentage is more likely to gain weight, for example?

I think that study is a bunch of garbage...

Some of you need to read up. You can't have an educated opinion unless your actually educated on the subject.

The "fatties" as one guy wanted to call it..arent idiots that just decided to be fat one day. It's just not that simple. Remember its very easy to have that perspective when your skinny. I'm not saying you have to feel sorry for them..but know your facts.

I think that this is a very interesting study, and while it's nice to know that there's possibly a scientific reason why some people are more predisposed to obesity than others, it's also true that the reasons why we reach for the milkshakes and ho ho's are just as important. I've been using the Structure House program to understand my relationship with the food and to learn how to make those healthy choices that circumvent whatever genetic factors are there as best I can.

http://www.structurehouse.com/book.html