The story so far: hyperpalatable foods – defined as those loaded with fat, salt and sugar – have been shown on both the behavioral and the neurological level to impel animals actively to seek them out, to keep eating until the food is gone, and to repeat these activities. Chapter 12, of David Kessler's The End of Overating, "Highly Rewarding Foods Rewire the Brain," takes the hypothesis one further step: Those of us who find ourselves overeating in these patterns
cannot control their responses to highly palatable foods because their brains have been changed by the foods they eat.
Hey! You promised us FREE FOOD!
Patience....below.
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This morning, we're continuing with a group review of David Kessler's The End of Overeating. Edward Spurlock initiated this series, and he's kindly keeping running links to earlier installments, which you can find in his immediately preceding diary.
We rely on each other to keep things lively. Here's the overall WHEE schedule...do sign up -- please! -- by replying to tip jar.
October 6
Tues PM - Sychotic1
October 7
Weds AM - digitalmuse
Weds PM - Edward Spurlock
October 8
Thurs AM - A DC Wonk
Thurs PM - ???
October 9
Fri AM - ???
Fri PM - ???
October 10
Sat AM - ???
Sat PM - Edward Spurlock (Kessler, Ch. 13)
October 11
Sun AM - louisev - Turtle Diary
Sun PM - ???
October 12
Mon AM - NC Dem
Mon PM - ???
October 13
Tues AM - Clio2 (Kessler, Ch. 14)
Chapter 12, "Rewarding Foods Rewire the Brain," is a short chapter, two pages. The footnotes are longer, more than three pages in smaller type.
Normally, we expect to tire of a stimulus, no matter how pleasurable. The first dish of zucchini from the garden is special, but in a few weeks we are desperately giving them away. The roast turkey at Thanksgiving dinner tasted wonderful, but we groan when the leftovers appear for the fifth time. In neurochemical terms, the prospect of these foods not longer stimulates dopamine, a motivation chemical, to the same degree.
Yet highly palatable foods can keep us hooked.
If the stimulus is powerful enough, novel enough, or administered intermittently enough, the brain may not curb its dopamine response after all...We see this with cocaine use, which does not result in habituation.
Fat, salt and sugar combinations as cocaine? Sounds bizarre...yet...for years before Kessler, friends would joke about Krispy Kreme’s legal "high."
Powerful enough: Researcher Gaetano Di Chiara, for instance, found that rats loved but eventually got bored with a corn-based, cheesy, Day-Glo snack called Fonzies. (BTW, Fonzies are a German-made snack sold in Italy – yes, named for the "Happy Days" character, who apparently was very popular there. It’s not clear to me if Fonzies are still on the market; the manufacturer’s website was "under construction," when I checked – but they were being promoted in 2006 with a TV ad featuring Freddy Krueger...possibly, with the Krueger ad, Fonzies jumped the shark?)
Yet...a "high-sugar, high-fat chocolate drink" did not lead to the same kind of habituation as the Fonzies. (Warning to those who rely on "nutritional drinks" that consist of water, sugar, oil, powdered milk and vitamins?)
Novel enough: You can always jazz the dopamine levels by switching stimuli. Had enough chips? Try a few jelly beans!
Administered intermittently enough: a combination of palatability and renewed novelty.
When we exposed animals to [a high-fat, high-sugar vanilla drink] daily for eight weeks...we saw no evidence of habituation. And when we limited exposure to just two days a week, the stimulating effect was even greater....
Also increasing the driving power of the drink on rats were two other tactics: providing the food on a predictable schedule and offering "a tantalizingly small amount of food."
But the statement that highly palatable foods "rewire our brains" really leans on a two-page footnote presenting evidence on differential expression of genes controlling brain chemistry in response to such edibles.
Kessler admits that it remains unproven whether what is going on involves only "conditioning and learning" or whether in fact exposure to such foods can cause "sensitization," as some drugs do – actually making the consumers more responsive to the neurochemical effects rather than less so. Research so far is only suggestive.
In one interesting footnoted experiment, some rats got sucrose access in their cages for ½ hour a day, another set for 12 hours a day. After they got thoroughly used to this pattern, the researchers took away the sugar entirely for a couple of weeks. Then they gave all the rats access again – for ½ hour a day. The rats who used to have the sweet stuff in their cages half the time gulped much more than the 1/2-hour-a-day rats.
However we interpret that, something was going on with the rats that had greater exposure time to sugar. Is this a warning about office environments where sweets are available throughout the day? Does it have some bearing on regain after dieting?
This week a flyer came in the mail with several coupons from Chick-fil-A. Most required a purchase – e.g., a free sandwich with purchase of a high-fructose corn syrup mixture -- but one offered something for free:
FREE Chick-fil-A Chick-N-Minis (TM) (3-Count)...Redeemable before 10:30 a.m.
Of course, after several weeks of Kessler, I’m skeptical but, never having tried these, I look them up and find info, including a number of fans out there online.
One review (link is to cached version, unfortunately, that's all that was left) included nutrition information for the 4-count version:
Calories, 350 in four, so three for free would be 262 calories
Total fat, 14 grams in four, so that would be 10.5 in three, equal to about 1 tablespoon butter
Sodium, 790 milligrams in four, so that would be about 592 in three, just about 1/4 tsp salt
Sugar, 8 grams in four would be 6 grams in three, about 1 1/2 tsp sugar
Protein, 18 grams in four, would be 13.5 in three, respectable, I try to eat about 50 grams a day
All four points of the compass: Falt, salt, sugar, glutamate. (Kessler does not concern himself with glutamate, but I believe there is reason to believe that glutamate – which the body recognizes as a protein signal – also is a factor in "hyperpalatability.") Reviewer continues:
They take their bite-sized Chick-fil-A chicken nugget and make it into a tiny chicken sandwich. These little treasures come in 3 count or 4 count and can also be ordered in 20 or 40 count platter sized portions. I bought a 40 count platter...of these Mini’s for some co-workers and they were gone in a flash.
Pros- Very tasty, quality all-breast chicken [I find this claim dubious, having learned that most nuggets out there are mystery mixtures--Clio2]. The tiny rolls used to sandwich each Mini is warm, soft and coated with sweet honey butter. Good value.
Cons- Why only a 3 and 4 count? A 4-count isn’t enough to satisfy a strong hunger. The sweetness of the rolls can be inconsistent at times and that’s a shame. Since the rolls of the Chick-n-Mini’s are lightly coated with honey butter spread, expect to get sticky. Chicken can be a little on the greasy side.
Fat and sugar especially noted. Four (at 350 calories!) weren’t enough to satisfy this reviewer. So what is likely to happen when someone is given three for free?
Another online review:
It's a crime that they're served only at breakfast. I rolled up at the drive-thru around 4 p.m. set to order Chick-Fil-A's original sandwich when my eye caught these on the menuboard. They looked like the second coming of KFC's Chicken Littles...I was all set to see if I'd discovered a suitable replacement...but was denied. No problem. I just made sure not to sleep in the next day so I could be up and at 'em before 10 a.m.
And offered only intermittently, on a fixed schedule! What have we just been reading? Seems quite a motivator –- reviewer plans to get up early to obtain this reward that he associates with earlier rewards, which have been -- just as with the sucrose-binging rats -- withdrawn from him for some time. (And look at the use of religious terminology. "Second coming": now that -- in Kessler's terms -- is salience!)
Comments to the later review were interesting, too:
love these! i work as a lawyer in houston, and when vendors really want to get on our good side, they bring us a tray of these for breakfast. there is a mad dash to the kitchen when the email hits that they are in there.
Given my personal tendency to eating jags, think I’ll pass.
Anyone out there want this coupon before it gets thrown away?