Yet Another Reason to Hate My Love Handles

Emily Farris — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:09:00 GMT

Your love handles are going to kill you. End of story. But if you want to know more...

Carrying extra fat around your middle dramatically increases your risk of early death, even if your overall weight is normal, say researchers.

A study of almost 360,000 people from nine European countries found waist size a "powerful indicator" of risk.

Each extra 2ins (5cm) raised the chance of early death by between 13% and 17%.

Ugh. We're hard-pressed to get rid of our gut. This just makes us want to throw in the towel and eat a double bacon cheeseburger. With mayo.

[BBC: 'Love handles' raise death risk]

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My Milkshake Brings All the Lard to My A*s

Emily Farris — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:51:00 GMT

Have you ever wondered why you get really excited about food, while other people eat it purely because they have to to survive—just like they have to put gas in their cars or drink water or put on clothes every day? Well, we wonder all the time. You probably know by now how much we love food, and when we say there's "Food We'd Like to Fuck" we really just mean we want to eat it in the most amazing way possible. So, yeah, we like food. But why, or how, do some other people eat it just because they have to?

While we're sad those people don't get to enjoy food the way we do, we certainly envy them, or rather, their waistlines.

But it turns out that the difference between how much we love the milkshakes and how much they love the milkshakes might have more to do with science than how much comfort food our parents gave us as children.

In a study of young girls and women, scientists tested the brain's response to a "highly palatable food" - chocolate milkshakes. They found that the part of the brain that releases the feel-good chemical dopamine in response to eating is less active in the obese.

The effect was most pronounced in women born with a gene that reduces their dopamine output by up to 30 to 40 per cent. Not only did their brains show the most blase or blunted reaction to the milkshake, but also, they were more likely to gain weight over the next year.

Scientists discovered it takes more food for obese people to experience the same 'high' as lean people, much as what happens with alcohol or drug abuse. 'If you want to avoid obesity, don't start walking down that path,' said Eric Stice, lead author of the report.

Published in this week's issue of the journal Science, the study is one of the first to show how individual differences in how the brain processes food reward "might put people at risk for overeating given this environment where there's just lots of really palatable food available," said co-author Dana Small, associate professor at Yale University.

The study underscores just how complex the brain's control or response to food is, says a Canadian obesity expert.

"It's quite an exciting study," said Dr. David Lau, chair of the diabetes and endocrine research group at the University of Calgary and president of Obesity Canada. "What they found was that overweight people have less excitatory response. They have to eat more in order to arrive at the same kind of satisfactory signals."

Researchers say it may be possible to turn on the dopamine response using drugs or behavioural therapies.

This could also explain why we can't have just a little sex, or a little whiskey:

His team focused on a particular part of the brain called the dorsal stratum, which is involved in food reward. "It's a circuit involved in everything that makes us feel good," Stice explains - having sex, eating a good meal, drinking alcohol or using drugs. "It's really the same neuro pathway...
"We think what's really going on is, if you consume a diet rich in fat and sugar, you get down regulation of the reward circuitry," Stice said. "By flooding the brain with dopamine your brain adjusts to having fewer receptors." That means it takes more food to experience the same "high" as lean people, much what happens with alcohol or drug abuse.

It is true that when we go without any of these things for an extended period of time (sex, alcohol, sugar, bacon), we start to think we can live without it.

[Canada.com: Obese people respond differently to food, study shows]

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