Your Brain on Portions and Pleasure

This report speaks directly to the message we are trying to get across: that overweight and obesity is about more than just molecule micromanagment.

To love your food and reintroduce pleasurable eating, can lead to neural changes that can help reduce overconsumption.

In this study, they used chocolate milkshakes, actually, to test the pleasure centers in the brain. It turns out that the subjects who had less activity in this area (while eating the milkshake) were more likely to overconsume and become overweight.

If you look at this link, you’ll see that the researchers have great data, but interpret their results backwards (I believe). They say that the pleasure center neurochemical, dopamine, may cause consumption — either too much or too little.

But I think these brain changes are not the cause of disordered eating, but the effect of disordered eating. They simply reflect the fact that these people already eat for the wrong reasons — their consumption is not about food and pleasure, it’s about filling some other need.

What does this have to do with portions?
Mindless eating leads to “passive overconsumption”. If you are eating in the car, while walking back to your desk, or playing video games, you tend to overeat. This, obviously, leads to overweight.

A big part of our Mediterranean approach is to include the eating behaviors that lead to more appreciation of your food, and so more control over pacing, and so more control over portions in the process.

Your goal is to eat all you want … but just want less. This can only be accomplished with the combination of health food selection (a la the Mediterranean food pyramid) along with new healthy eating behaviors that limit overconsumption.