It’s one of the saddest pieces of research to come out of the obesity crisis: Most would assume that people with weight problems get a lot of satisfaction and pleasure from eating, but a new study seems to show that the converse is actually true: The obese don’t appear to get as much pleasure as they expect from food.
University of Oregon researchers hooked 77 young women up to brain scanners and had them drink chocolate milkshakes. The brains of the women who were obese showed two differences from those of normal-weight women: When shown the milkshake, their “reward circuitry” showed more response, but when drinking the milkshake, their pleasure center showed less response. Which means there was a big gap in the amount of pleasure they thought they would get and the amount they actually got.
This makes perfect sense. It seems natural to salivate over something that looks delicious. But after finding that it tastes disappointing, you would want to search out something that might be more satisfying. If your brain responses reinforce that pattern, it could lead to consuming a lot of extra calories.
It probably doesn’t taste disappointing…they’re probably thinking how much fatter the milkshake will make them, decreasing their expected pleasure. I’d be pretty disappointed if I responded to a study seeking obese people and they made me drink a choc milkshake.
As someone who is obese, and definitely enjoys my food, I’d have to agree with jaykayen — I bet there’s a guilt response at work here.
Interestingly, when I am trying very hard to eat healthy, I find I enjoy the occasional splurge on something fattening, like french fries or a milkshake, more than when I’m just eating whatever I want.
Another reason might be that they truly don’t enjoy eating. Speaking for my obese self, I enjoy food porn as much as anyone and I don’t feel guilty about food, even when it’s a chocolate milkshake. Still, I’ll put off eating for as long as possible, sometimes conveniently “forgetting” to eat, because I just don’t like the activity. I mean, there is literally no joy whatsoever in it for me. Even when I’m sharing a meal with friends, eating remains an empty, meaningless process. Consequently, I fail to eat sufficient calories or in my haste to get eating over with I take in the wrong sort of calories — both of which is enough to short-circuit any weight loss effort.