Fatty Foods and Your Brain

Nada A. Abumrad claims that fat is our 6th taste bud and that “understanding our perception of fat in food might influence what foods we eat and the quantities of fat that we consume.” Researchers Ivan de Araujo and Edmund Rolls have conducted studies focused on the texture of foods, in which they have connected the textures to the prevailing issue in the United States: obesity. However, even with an in-depth understanding of our perception of fats in food, there is no guarantee that we will be able to control our never-ending cravings. Today, we see food products that are “0 calorie” or “90% less fat,” but the majority taste lacking or odd compared to the original, rendering Araujo and Rolls’ research weak. Researchers from WUSTL think that genetics, not textures, influence what foods we eat. Further research into the CD36 gene would be more beneficial than researching food’s textures. The CD36 gene encodes a membrane receptor for long-chain fatty acids and lipoproteins and influences our preference for certain foods. Mastering our knowledge of the CD36 gene would help us look into effective ways in treating and preventing obesity.

Ivan de Araujo and Edmund Rolls conducted a study in which they placed 12 hungry participants into an fMRI machine and fed them variously textured mixtures of food through a tube. They carefully studied the scans of the participants’ brains and found that an area of the brain called the “reward center” lit up when the participants consumed fatty mixtures. The results also found that participants could categorize which foods were fatty and non-fatty through the texture itself. Rolls suggests that this could be the reason why humans can’t seem to control their cravings- because the brain tells them not to stop.

On the other hand, a study conducted by Washington University of St. Louis found that a variant of the CD36 gene allows humans to recognize the presence of fat in their food. This differs from the previous notion that humans could identify high-fat foods through texture. Instead, this study suggests that the presence of fat can alter the way our tongues perceive the food, similar to the way it perceives other tastes such as sweet, sour, salty, or bitter. Both of these studies aim to fight obesity by researching how humans detect fat in their diet, but WUSTL has the more effective way of finding a cure.

Zald claims that, “People's preferences for certain textures vary, which may explain why some are more addicted to fatty foods than others.” However, according to the WUSTL study, the more a person’s diet is high in fat the less CD36 protein their body produces, which consequently prevents them from detecting fat in their foods. Less CD36 protein production in the body basically means a person would be less sensitive to the presence of fat in their diet. This is also why a person would be more addicted to fatty foods than others. This can be dangerous because people become unaware and less caring of what kind of foods they consume. The presence of fat in a food alerts the person’s brain and triggers the person to be more mindful of their consumption of fats.

The dangers of not being able to detect fat in your food can be correlated to obesity since people prefer foods that have high fat content. Without the knowledge of fat in your food, you would subconsciously just keep eating fatty foods. Obesity has been an increasing risk in America, with its rates rising dramatically over the past 3 decades as diets incorporate more and more French fries, cheeseburgers, and other foods high in fat. Rolls suggests that people can differentiate which foods are high in fat by the texture. He believes that humans evolved in a way that allowed them to identify which foods are high in fat through texture for survival. However, he fails to explain how the brain could tell how much fat is in a food only by the texture. In addition, his study lacked controls because he did not take other factors like smell into consideration. You can argue that the participants could have pictured fatty foods due to the smell, and not just the texture, of the foods they were being fed.

In WUSTL’s study, they found that there was a slight correlation between a person’s BMI and their production of CD36- the higher BMI a person had, the less CD36 their body produced. As mentioned previously, less production means that you will be less sensitive to the presence of fat in your diet, which means you will continue to eat fatty foods and contribute to the causes of obesity. Unlike Rolls’ study, this one took various factors into account including sight and smell. To control these variables, the researchers dimmed the testing area with a red lamp and also required the participants to wear nose clips. WUSTL’s study is clearly more reliable and effective in finding a way to fight obesity. Research in genetics is more effective in discovering a new procedure to fight obesity than research in texture. The researchers at WUSTL clearly have the right idea as they are currently studying the CD36 gene in depth. Researching the textures could be helpful in the future, when we understand more about our brain and how it works, but for now, genetic research seems to be more reliable and helpful. Rolls and Araujo’s experiments aren’t useless or incompetent, but in present time, genetic research seems to be more efficient and beneficial to finding a cure to obesity.