It may sound counterintuitive, but a new study confirms that overweight people receive less pleasure from drinking a milkshake than normal weight people do. As does almost everything, it comes down to chemicals in the brain, as to what level of gratification one derives from food, resulting in overeating or not. 

Dr. Eric Stice, a scientist at Oregon Research Institute, conducted a study in which women savored milkshakes inside a brain scanner. Those whose brains did not perceive gratification, tended to overeat. 

Simply put, the brain scan showed that the dorsal striatum, a dopamine-rich pleasure center of the brain, lit up like a lightbulb in response to the taste of the milkshake, in lean people, but was far less active in the brains of overweight people. This, undoubtedly supports the theory that the tendency toward obesity, is at least in part, genetic.

Those whose dopamine center was active were less likely to overeat. Those with less of a brain response to the milkshake, were determined to be more likely to gain weight. 

In previous studies, it has been shown that obese people tend to have fewer dopamine receptors in the brain. Dopamine is the brain chemical that indicates pleasure. Those people with a gene, Taq1A1, tend to have fewer dopamine receptors, and were more likely to gain weight over the coming year. 

So, I guess all this time that we’ve been whining to our men, “I feel fat!”, they haven’t been too far off the mark when they’ve replied, “It’s all in your head!”