Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Obese children may crave more sugar than other children, according to new research that demonstrates that the reward centers of their brains are stimulated more intensely when exposed to sweet foods.
According to Sarah Knapton, Science Editor for The Telegraph, the study authors are not sure if the change takes place over time, or if some kids are simply born with a biological impulse to crave sugary foods. Their research appears in the International Journal of Obesity.
“The study is a wake-up call that prevention has to start very early because some children may be born with a hypersensitivity to food rewards or they may be able to learn a relationship between food and feeling better faster than other children,” first author Kerri Boutelle of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) told Knapton.
“The take-home message is that obese children, compared to healthy weight children, have enhanced responses in their brain to sugar,” added Boutelle, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and founder of the university’s Center for Health Eating and Activity Research (CHEAR). “That we can detect these brain differences in children as young as eight years old is the most remarkable and clinically significant part of the study.”
The UCSD researchers scanned the brains of 23 children between the ages of eight and 12 as they tasted one-fifth of a teaspoon of water mixed with table sugar (sucrose). They were told to swirl the sugar-water mixture in their mounts with their eyes closed, mentally focusing on the taste, the university said in a statement.
Ten of the youngsters participating were obese, while the remaining 13 had healthy weights, as classified by their body mass index (BMI) readings. They were all pre-screened for potential confounding factors, including psychiatric disorders such as ADHD, and all of them liked the taste of sucrose.
“The brain images showed that obese children had heightened activity in the insular cortex and amygdala, regions of the brain involved in perception, emotion, awareness, taste, motivation and reward,” the university said. “Notably, the obese children did not show any heightened neuronal activity in a third area of the brain – the striatum – that is also part of the response-reward circuitry and whose activity has… been associated with obesity in adults.”
Typically, this part of the brain does not fully develop until adolescence, the researchers said. One of the more interesting findings of their study, they added, was the fact that the brain scans could be documenting the early development of the food reward circuitry in pre-adolescents for the first time.
Sumit Passary of Tech Times noted that the study does not show a direct relationship between overeating and sugar hypersensitivity, but it does support the belief that obese kids likely have an increased psychological reward response to food. That means they could be attracted to sugary foods throughout their lifetimes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that more than one-third of the overall American population is obese, Passary said. In addition, research suggests that children who are obese are between 80 percent and 90 percent likely to become obese adults, added Hannah Osborne of International Business Times.
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