DEPRESSION FUELS OBESITY

If feeling sad makes you reach for an extra helping of ice cream, your taste buds may be more to blame than your willpower. A new study shows that intense feelings can make us more sensitive to taste but less sensitive to how much fat we’re consuming. (click below to read more)

 German researchers recruited mildly sad or anxious volunteers and had them watch a happy, sad, or boring video clip. They also asked them to taste samples of a creamy drink containing different amounts of fat and to try a range of bitter, sweet, and sour flavors. They found that watching the happy or sad clip heightened volunteers’ sensitivity to flavor, but their ability to tell how much fat was in the drink “got much worse,” Rutgers University researcher Paul Breslin tells NPR.org. Volunteers who watched the boring clip showed no change in any of their tasting abilities. The findings may help explain why people often gain weight when they’re depressed. “They may be inadvertently eating more fat,” Breslin says, because their low mood impairs their ability to taste it.