If you’ve ever bought a box of donuts only to find it triggers a donut phase in your life, you may appreciate the findings of a new study. The research, led by a team at the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research and Yale University, finds that just a small daily addition of fat and sugar to the diet can trigger changes in taste preferences and to the brain pathways that underlie reward. The study was published in Cell Metabolism. Whether the changes are reversible and how long it would take to reverse them are up for grabs.
“[L]ike addictive drugs,” the authors write in their paper, “there is evidence for a causal role of diet (i.e., fat/sugar) in rewiring brain circuits to promote further seeking of energy-dense foods.”
Although the participants in the current study didn’t gain weight, it’s possible they would have over a longer time period, or with larger shifts in diet. The real takeaway is how small a dietary change can lead to alterations in the brain and in taste preferences, likely below the level of conscious perception.
