WASHINGTON — Imagine a world where people preferred carrots over candy bars and figs over French fries. It would be a world with fewer cases of Type 2 diabetes, fewer weight-related heart attacks and fewer deaths.
According to researchers, that world is within reach — if you take the time to train your brain.
In a recent study published in Nutrition & Diabetes, scientists found that humans can reverse their cravings for junk food and rewire their brains to get pleasure out of healthy food.
Susan Roberts, a professor of nutrition at Tufts University and an author on the study, says food is addicting, and it holds a power over people.
For many, that addiction happens when junk food is introduced into the diet.
“Basically, we don’t start out loving French fries. You know, you try to stuff those into a 6-month-old kid and they would hate you for it. But we learn to love them because, basically, we learn to love any taste that comes along with a rush of calories,” says Roberts. When a food is continuously eaten, circuits are established in the brain and the body craves that particular food.
“All you have to do is keep eating them and bingo, it turns into a craving for many people,” Roberts says.
However, the brain can be restructured to form new connections, making different foods feel normal — even pleasurable.
In the research, Roberts and her colleagues studied 13 overweight and obese men and women. Eight of the subjects were participants in a weight-loss program designed by Roberts; five were in a control group.
Both groups had MRI scans at the beginning and end of the six-month period. Those who participated in the study’s weight-loss program saw changes in their brains, including an increased sensitivity (or increased reward feeling) for healthy foods and a decreased sensitivity to the high-calorie, unhealthy foods.
How was it done? The answer sounds simpler than you might think — Roberts says the key is to eat healthy food when you are hungry.
“Rather than eating cheese and crackers and ice cream and pizza when you’re starving, if you go through a process of reeducation where you have a salad and grilled chicken and apples and things like that, the hunger really kind of makes your brain wake up and say,
