Abstract
Food reward, not hunger, is the main driving force behind eating in the modern obesogenic environment. Palatable foods, generally calorie-dense and rich in sugar/fat, are thus readily overconsumed despite the resulting health consequences. Important advances have been made to explain mechanisms underlying excessive consumption as an immediate response to presentation of rewarding tastants. However, our understanding of long-term neural adaptations to food reward that oftentimes persist during even a prolonged absence of palatable food and contribute to the reinstatement of compulsive overeating of high-fat high-sugar diets, is much more limited. Here we discuss the evidence from animal and human studies for neural and molecular adaptations in both homeostatic and non-homeostatic appetite regulation that may underlie the formation of a " feed-forward" system, sensitive to palatable food and propelling the individual from a basic preference for palatable diets to food craving and compulsive, addiction-like eating behavior.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 127-139 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology |
Volume | 33 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2012 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Preparation of this review was supported by the Swedish Research Council, the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Swedish Brain Research Foundation. J.A. was supported in part by the Swedish Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Keywords
- Addiction
- Craving
- Dietary fat
- Obesity
- Plasticity
- Sugar