Junk Food Creates Dopamine-Deficit Addiction In Rats

Love to Eat| While the findings that rats consuming high-calorie foods behaved as if they were compulsively addicted cannot be applied directly to humans, scientists believe the research is highly relevant.

Specifically the scientists found decreased levels of a dopamine receptor that sends a feeling of reward in the brains of overweight rats.

To conduct the study the researchers headed to the grocery store, buying all the usual high-calorie foods and also healthy ones. Then they devised three diets, one allowing both healthy foods and unrestricted access to so-called ‘junk foods’. 

Soon the third group not only ate a diet almost totally junk food but ignored the danger of shocks, in order to retrieve the high-calorie food.

“What we’re seeing in our animals is very similar to what you’d see in humans who overindulge,” researcher Paul Kenny of The Scripps Research Institute in Florida said. “It seemed that it was okay, from what we could tell, to enjoy snack foods, but if you repeatedly overindulge, that’s where the problem comes in.” via Reuters