Childhood Obesity - Do you have an overweight child? We offer tips to help your child lose weight and get fit!

The My Overweight Child blog will help you keep informed about the latest research, findings, and resources available to parents of overweight or obese kids. There are many knowledgeable people working on the increasingly dire problem of childhood obesity - and we want to give parents a place where they can check in regularly to see the latest studies and tips available to help you help your child lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

We invite you to add your comments - if you have feedback for the blog, would like some specific topics covered, or you just want to share your experience as a parent dealing with childhood obesity.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Study Says High-Cal, High-Fat Foods Can be Addictive to Lab Animals

More evidence that compulsive overeating may not simply be a failure of willpower. A new study from the Scripps Research Institute in Florida found that high calorie, high-fat foods can be addictive in laboratory animals.
  • Dr. Paul Kenny and his colleagues allowed one group of rats to eat as much bacon, sausage, cheese cake, frosting, and other high calorie foods as they wanted.
  • These rats quickly became obese, but the researchers also found that they developed a tolerance to the pleasure they got from food.
  • Like drug addicts, they had to keep eating more to experience the same pleasures.
  • Overeating caused levels of dopamine receptors in their brains to drop, a phenomenon associated with drug addiction and obesity.
"People know intuitively that there is more to overeating than just low will power," said Dr. Kenny. "There is a system in the brain that has been turned on or over-activated, and that is driving overeating at some subconscious level."

The study appeared in the journal Neuroscience.

Labels: overeating

Posted By: Aspen/CRC