“Ultraprocessed” foods seem to trigger neural signals that make us want
more and more calories, unlike other foods in the Western diet.
Among those views is the idea that particular nutrients such as fats,
carbs or sugars are to blame for our alarming obesity pandemic.
(Globally the prevalence of obesity nearly tripled between 1975 and
2016, according to the World Health Organization. The rise accompanies
related health threats that include heart disease and diabetes.) But
Hall, who works at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and
Kidney Diseases, where he runs the Integrative Physiology section, has
run experiments that point fingers at a different culprit. His studies
suggest that a dramatic shift in how we make the food we eat—pulling
ingredients apart and then reconstituting them into things like frosted
snack cakes and ready-to-eat meals from the supermarket freezer—bears
the brunt of the blame. This “ultraprocessed” food, he and a growing
number of other scientists think, disrupts gut-brain signals that
normally tell us that we have had enough, and this failed signaling
leads to overeating.
In Brief:-
- Many nutrition scientists blame overeating fats or carbohydrates for the world's obesity pandemic.
- But new research points to “ultraprocessed” foods such as chicken nuggets and instant soup mixes that dominate modern diets.
- These foods seem to distort signals between the gut and brain that normally tell us we are full, so instead people overeat.
Source:- Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight
Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake. Kevin D. Hall et al. in Cell Metabolism, Vol. 30, No. 1, pages 67–77 and e1–e3; July 2, 2019.
