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REAL LIFE NEWS: ADDICTIVE MILKSHAKES

by Hazed

If you hear the word addictive you think of drugs such as heroin or cocaine, or alcohol, or in the case of spoilt rich Hollywood stars, sex. But some surprising research has shown that the sight of a milkshake activates exactly the same areas of the brain that light up when a cocaine addict sees the drug.

This could explain just why it can be so hard to lose weight, and why obesity treatments don't work very well. Ashley Gearhardt of Yale University in Connecticut said, "If certain foods are addictive, this may explain the difficulty people experience in achieving sustainable weight loss."

Gearhardt and his team wanted to explore what happens in the brain when young women are tempted by an alluring snack. They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to watch the brain activity when 48 young women were offered a chocolate milkshake or a tasteless solution. The women in the study ranged from thin to obese.

The result was that seeing the milkshake triggered brain activity in two brain areas that have been implicated in an addict's urge to use drugs.

So it's not my fault I can't lose weight: it's an addiction to chocolate!

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/4849238/Surprising-discovery-in-research-addiction

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