Brains of Obese Teenagers Unusually Susceptible to Food Commercials

Keep overweight adolescents away from food commercials or they may face difficulty losing weight. Sounds a bit weird, right? Unfortunately a Dartmouth study reveals that TV food commercials disproportionately stimulate the brains of obese teenagers, including parts of the brain known to control taste, pleasure, and the mouth, suggesting they mentally stimulate unhealthy eating habits that make it hard for them to lose weight later in life.

According to the study your dieting efforts should not only be targeting the initial temptation to eat a tasty but unhealthy food, but also subsequent thoughts of actually eating it. In other words, you should imagine yourself eating a healthy salad instead of a pizza or burger.

Researchers from Dartmouth College’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth were involved in the study, which was published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

The connection of food commercials to obesity in teenagers has increased drastically over the past 30 years, and the research has linked the quantum of TV shows viewed in childhood with a higher risk for obesity. There is evidence that supports the fact that exposure to food marketing increases eating habits linked to obesity.

The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to observe the responses of brains in obese and in healthy weight adolescents aged 12-16 to 2 dozen fast-food commercials and to non-food commercials. The commercials were shown during an age-appropriate, TV show, “The Big Bang Theory,” so that the subjects didn’t know the purpose of the study.

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