Junk food diets could stop people craving healthier food

Scientists warn that a diet full of fatty junk food and sugary treats could actually work to destroy our urge to consume healthy food products.

An Australian study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology with rats found that not only did the rats gain significant weight eating junk food, it seemed to kill any desire for them to eat healthier food. This could perhaps help to understand behavioural changes in people that regularly eat ‘bad’ foods and appear to exhibit low willpower, putting them at risk of overindulging and obesity.

The researchers believe that by consistently eating junk food, this has a big impact on the reward circuit areas of animals’ brains. One such part affected they say is the orbitofrontal cortex, an area associated with decision-making. The experts involved in the study say the findings may have implications for a human’s ability to limit eating certain foods due to the fact the reward circuitry is similar in every mammal.

Professor Margaret Morris, from the University of New South Wales, said: “The interesting thing about this finding is that if the same thing happens in humans, eating junk food may change our responses to signals associated with food rewards. It’s like you’ve just had ice cream for lunch, yet you still go and eat more when you hear the ice cream van come by.”

For two weeks the team involved in the study fed one group of rats healthy rat food, with a second group being access to unhealthy human foods such as pie, dumplings, cookies and cake.

All of the rats were given cherry and grape sugar water to drink. The rats eating junk food were consuming 150% more calories and their weight had increased by 10% after the fortnight.

Within one particular experiment, scientists managed to teach the rats certain sound cues to link to either drink. Interestingly, if the rats given healthy food had heard the sound cue for grape sugar water after already just drinking it, they would not drink any more of it. Meanwhile, the junk food-fed rats responded different to the sound cues.

Even if they had just drank a lot of the grape sugar water, the sound cue for said drink would still somehow make them drink more of it. The same pattern was found for cherry sugar water.
Therefore it would seem that junk food-fed rats responded to sound cues and were unable to comprehend they had just overindulged in something (in this case the flavoured sugar water).

Basically, their natural preference for novelty had vanished and no longer avoided sounds linked to an overfamiliar food or taste, happy to continue indulging on what they were already eating.

This was even apparent for a significant period of time after the rats went back to a healthier diet. In comparison, the healthy rats were found to actually stop responding to the food they had just consumed.

“We know a lot about food and nutrition and what we should be doing, and yet we’re getting fatter and fatter,” Morris says. “Our sort of diet appears to override an animal’s ability to know it’s just eaten something—they’re just eating indiscriminately, if you will.”

Dr Amy Reichelt, lead author of the paper, commented: “As the global obesity epidemic intensifies, advertisements may have a greater effect on people who are overweight and make snacks like chocolate bars harder to resist.”

Junk food at supermarket checkouts is worsening the obesity crisis

Parents – have you ever been stood in a supermarket shopping queue that seems to never decrease in size, this whilst simultaneously being nagged endlessly by your children for chocolate and/or sweets which are convenient placed right at the end of each and every checkout. If so, you are not alone, and this is the dilemma faced by millions of parents around Britain who are being harassed by their children into buying the unhealthy junk food stacked up at the checkouts.

In fact, a new survey has found that a staggering 90% of shoppers believe this cunning sales tactic is partly contributing to obesity and surely now the Government will be forced to push through legislation aimed at stopping this practice, and easing the spiralling obesity crisis.

On Monday a campaign was launched called ‘Junk Free Checkouts’ which does exactly what it says on the tin – aims to make supermarket checkouts free of junk and help to put an end to the ‘pester power’ of children who almost bully their parents into buying them unhealthy and high sugary treats that are placed near the tills.

The initiative was announced by the British Dietetic Association and the Children’s Food Campaign, following the results of a nationwide survey in which 78% of people complained that junk food at supermarket checkouts is ‘annoying’. Moreover, 83% of respondents said they had been nagged by their children for junk food at the checkouts and 75% have relented and bought junk for their children due to incessant pestering.

There was almost 2,000 people who completed the Chuck the Junk Survey, mainly comprising of women, of which two thirds had children.

Supermarkets have been pressured by health campaigners for a number of years to stop selling unhealthy junk food at their tills as they say it is blatantly targeted at easily swayed children and the promotional offers do not help matters on what has been described as the ‘guilt lanes’.

Speaking on behalf of the British Dietetic Association, obesity specialist Linda Hindle commented: “Retailers are unwilling to stop pushing unhealthy food at the checkout and queuing areas. It may be lucrative for them but, as our survey found, it is deeply unpopular with customers and nudges purchasing behaviour in the wrong direction. If retailers can’t act on their own, then we hope to see robust action from the Government to tackle this problem.”

The issue was raised in Government back in July when health minister Anna Soubry blasted supermarkets for the cynical store layouts which make it particularly difficult for parents with young children. However, she then ruled out any clampdown on the sweet and chocolate guilt lanes in shops and supermarkets, merely days after making a vow to get rid of them.

Some of the worst offenders in this regard have found to be Asda, Morrisons and Tesco, all stocking an alarming amount of junk food at their tills.

Campaigners have hit out at Supermarkets for seemingly not acting on promises to improve their methods in selling confectionery in the wake of a 2003 investigation by the independent watchdog the Food Commission.

There are those who say that stocking checkout aisles with chocolate and sweets is a calculating ploy by the supermarkets to tempt shoppers into a sugar rush after a long, laborious trek around the supermarket.

Professor of marketing at EM-Lyon Business School, Agnes Nairn, said that shoppers could change their buying habits by the point of reaching the checkout. “Consumers are more likely to go for something unhealthy when they are tired because they aren’t able to make the rational decision they would make otherwise,” she said. “Although they all know that a chocolate egg is not as good for them as fruit salad, if you have to do that in a hurry, they make the wrong choice.”