Obesity Dulls Taste Senses!

Obese mice had about 25 percent fewer taste buds than lean mice in study

Previous studies have indicated that weight gain can reduce one's sensitivity to the taste of food, and that this effect can be reversed when the weight is lost again, but it's been unclear as to how this phenomenon arises. Now a study publishing March 20 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Andrew Kaufman, Robin Dando, and colleagues at Cornell University shows that inflammation, driven by obesity, actually reduces the number of taste buds on the tongues of mice.

Does eating good-tasting food make you gain weight?

Despite the common perception that good-tasting food is unhealthy and causes obesity, new research from the Monell Center using a mouse model suggests that desirable taste in and of itself does not lead to weight gain.

"Most people think that good-tasting food causes obesity, but that is not the case. Good taste determines what we choose to eat, but not how much we eat over the long-term," said study senior author Michael Tordoff, PhD, a physiological psychologist at Monell.

Researchers who study obesity have long known that laboratory rodents fed a variety of tasty human foods, such as chocolate chip cookies, potato chips and sweetened condensed milk, avidly overeat the good-tasting foods and become obese.

These studies have provided support for the common belief that tasty food promotes overeating and ensuing weight gain. However, because no study had separated the positive sensory qualities of the appetizing foods from their high sugar and fat content, it was impossible to know if the taste was actually driving the overeating.

Accordingly, Tordoff and colleagues designed a series of experiments to assess the role of taste in driving overeating and weight gain. The findings are published online ahead of print in the journal Physiology & Behavior.

The researchers first established that laboratory mice strongly like food with added nonnutritive sweet or oily tastes. To do this they gave mice two cups of food. One group of mice had a choice between a cup of plain rodent chow and a cup of chow mixed with the noncaloric sweetener sucralose. The other group received a choice between a cup of plain rodent chow and a cup of chow mixed with mineral oil, which also has no calories.

The mice ignored the plain chow and ate almost all of their food from the cups containing the sweetened or oily chow, establishing that these non-caloric tastes were indeed very appealing.

Next, new groups of mice received one of the three diets for six weeks: one group was fed plain chow, one group was fed chow with added sucralose, and one group was fed chow with added mineral oil. At the end of this period, the groups fed the sweet or oily chow were no heavier or fatter than were the animals fed the plain chow.

Additional tests revealed that even after six weeks, the animals still highly preferred the taste-enhanced diets, demonstrating the persistent strong appeal of both sweet and oily tastes.

In another experiment, the researchers fed mice a high-fat diet that is known to make mice obese. Mice fed this high-fat diet sweetened with sucralose got no fatter than did those fed the plain version.

"Even though we gave mice delicious diets over a prolonged period, they did not gain excess weight. People say that 'if a food is good-tasting it must be bad for you,' but our findings suggest this is not the case. It should be possible to create foods that are both healthy and good-tasting," said Tordoff.

MY SCIENTIFIC OPINION:

First batch of mice taste buds are reduced by bad foods is an indication that the mice would need to eat more of the food to become satiated (SATISFIED) as in humans who eat more of these foods to feel satisfied.

Not only is are the Mice eating these foods, but they are still burning calories that prevent weight gain by being very active as MICE do! Humans in the USA are less active then now then they were just 20 years ago.

Also, there strong evidence that in HUMANS who use additive sweetners, were subject to gain weight and inflammation! Good food does not mean Fake good tasting food won't cause weight gain. In fact it is a known fact that other fake foods considered good for you are tripling our rates of diabetes and obesity each year.

Eating like a MOUSE is not a good idea in this case study!

Beware of small studies done to use in food marketing and consumption.