Pizza, cheeseburgers, french fries… I’m yet to meet a person that doesn’t have a love for one of all of these foods. We assume that it is the taste of these foods that drives us to love them and crave them, but have you ever considered that maybe your craving for high carb fatty foods isn’t actually your fault?
Combination Foods – how our brain deals with them
‘Combination foods’ i.e. a combination of fat and carbohydrates is rarely found in nature. Therefore when confronted with our modern snacks or fast food, 
our brain simply has not evolved to know how to deal with them.
Our brains have two separate ‘systems’ for dealing with foods that are high in fat and foods that are high in carbohydrates, and the brain uses each system to decide whether or not it would like to consume that particular type of food. However when presented with foods that are both high in fat and high in carbohydrates, research shows that the brain shows simultaneous activation of both of these ‘systems’, producing a much greater reward effect than either alone.
“Our study shows that when both nutrients are combined, the brain seems to overestimate the energetic value of the food” says Monash University’s Professor Dana Small.
Professor Small decided to prove this theory, so wired 206 people up to ‘brain scanners’ and proceeded to show them images of fatty, sugary and ‘combination’ snacks. Each time the combination foods were shown on the screen both reward centres in the brain lit up. Regardless of whether the participant liked that food or not, the brain still craved them.
It is this combination of foods (fat and carbs) that is triggering both regions and creating a ‘super signal’. Whilst conducting their research they also stumbled upon another part of the brain that was triggered by these combination foods; the Striatum. This part of the brain is linked to habitual behaviour (addiction). This demonstrates that there is a clear distinction between liking something and wanting something; this comes directly from addiction literature. Take cigarettes for example, somebody can crave a cigarette even if they don’t particularly like it. The same goes for these combination foods.
So there you have it, you can be forgiven for craving that pizza or chocolate biscuit. However, that doesn’t mean that you can go ahead and give into your cravings. It is important to maintain a balanced, healthy diet in order to either lose or maintain a healthy sustainable weight.
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