For years I've heard people talking about the parallel rise of weight gain and fake food such as sweeteners and other strange concoctions produced by the chemical industry. There has been little interest on the part of the current administration to study or report facts related to the impact of fake food but this Purdue study raises some interesting questions. Maybe when we have an administration that is curious about something(science, food, economy, foreign policy, pharma, anything) we might start to discover what is really going on with what we're putting in our bodies.
The report, published in Behavioral Neuroscience, presents some counterintuitive findings: Animals fed with artificially sweetened yogurt over a two-week period consumed more calories and gained more weight — mostly in the form of fat — than animals eating yogurt flavored with glucose, a natural, high-calorie sweetener. It's a continuation of work the Purdue group began in 2004, when they reported that animals consuming saccharin-sweetened liquids and snacks tended to eat more than animals fed high-calorie, sweetened foods. The new study, say the scientists, offers stronger evidence that how we eat may depend on automatic, conditioned responses to food that are beyond our control.
