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@LittleBlueYugo, there’s also the carefully engineered “addictive” factor of fat, salt, and sugar in cookies and other mass-produced “junk food”. Even homemade cookies have a delicious balance of that unholy trinity.
Add in the warm, fuzzy memories that certain foods can trigger (especially “comfort foods”), and you get a real rush of Dopamine. All addictions are really just addictions to Dopamine. The only difference between them is the substance required to give you that Dopamine rush.
Genetics play a role in obesity, too. Appetite & hunger are NOT just things you control with “will-power”. They’re the result of a complex dance of hormones, between the brain and the stomach.
I just saw on BBC News that scientists have isolated one of the genes that controls appetite and the feelings of fullness (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23312712).
The gene is called “FTO”, and there are 2 versions of it: High-Risk and Low-Risk. Everyone has 2 copies of the FTO gene, one from each parent. Those whose FTO genes are both High-Risk, are 70% more likely to be obese.
Why?
Because of how FTO affects the production of ghrelin, which is the hormone that makes you feel hungry.
After a meal, our ghrelin levels drop. However, if you have 2 High-Risk FTO genes, your ghrelin levels don’t fall nearly as far as they should, and they start to rise again much sooner. You also crave more fatty foods than people with Low-Risk FTO genes do. Our brains light up at the sight of these high-calorie foods, even after we’ve just been fed!
Scientists think that these High-Risk FTO mutations were necessary to allow our bodies to easily store fat in summer, so we could survive the famine of winter. But, now that food is in constant overabundance, and we’re more likely to be sitting at a desk all day than running around the countryside hunting & fishing & farming, those mutations are a real problem.
As you can imagine, this is a groundbreaking discovery, especially now that obesity & Type-2 Diabetes are at epidemic levels. The pharmaceutical industry is developing ways of controlling ghrelin levels, but they’re years away from it.
In the meantime, how do you suppress ghrelin? With exercise & high-protein foods—both of which, coincidentally, also help control ADHD symptoms!
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