Eating sweet food forms memory of the meal – findings could encourage novel treatment for obesity

According to a research by three American universities, eating sweet foods prompts the brain to make a memory of the meal.

Researchers from Georgia Regents University, Georgia State University and Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center found that sweet food activates neurons located in the dorsal hippocampus – an area of the brain where a person’s unique episodic memory (autobiographical events encountered at a specific time and place) is stored. Scientists believe this type of memory is crucial to controlling food habits and the findings could lead to new treatment for obesity.

"We think episodic memory can be used to control eating behavior,” said Professor Marise Parent of Georgia State University. "We make decisions like 'I probably won't eat now. I had a big breakfast.' We make decisions based on our memory of what and when we ate."

The discovery is backed by their previous research on rats, which found that making the rodents’ dorsal hippocampal neurons temporarily inactive following a sweet meal – the period when the memory of that meal forms, accelerated their beginning of the next meal and caused them to eat more. [Read more 7 Foods That Will Help You Lose Weight]

It is important to form memories of meals in order to maintain a healthy diet. A London-based study showed that when encoding of the memory in humans is disrupted by events such as watching TV, the mechanism causes the person to eat more food during the next meal. The scientists also found that if people with amnesia are offered food, they will eat again even if they have already eaten because they don’t have any memory of the meal.

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The new study showed that a sweet meal consisting of sucrose or saccharin, boosted the expression of the synaptic plasticity marker – vital in making memories – in the dorsal hippocampul neurons in rats. The researchers came to the conclusion because the marker called activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein (Arc) was increased significantly.

Professor Parent said that researchers must consider how our brain controls frequency and onset of meal in order to comprehend energy regulation and cause of obesity.

According to studies, increased nibbling is associated affirmatively with obesity, and an obese person snacks more often than their slimmer counterparts. Research have also found that over the past 30 years adults and children are consuming more snacks each day and getting more of their calories from sweet snacks such as, desserts and sweetened beverages daily.

Obesity is a growing health concern in developed countries.

In the United States, two out of every three Americans are considered overweight or obese. Obesity has led to over 120,000 preventable deaths each year in the US.

In UK, it is believed that one third of the population could be obese by the year 2020. Adult obesity rates have almost quadrupled in the last 25 years and by a 2012 statistics 23.1% of British people are considered obese.

Obesity may lead to diseases such as, Heart disease, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure, gallbladder diseases etc. [এই ১০টি কারণে আপনার উচিৎ প্রতিদিন বীট জুস পান করা]

In the future, the researchers would like to ascertain if a similar effect on Arc expression of dorsal hippocampul neurons can be seen found in nutritionally balanced solid or liquid meal that contain fat, protein and carbohydrates.

"There is limited knowledge regarding how the brain controls the timing of meals. These findings are consistent with our hypothesis dorsal hippocampus neurons form a memory of a meal," added Professor Parent.