CAMBRIDGE, England, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- Individuals with a specific gene variant showed increased preference for high-fat foods and decreased preference for sugary foods, according to a new study led by the University of Cambridge.
Cambridge researchers call their latest study, published in the journal Nature Communications, one of the first attempts to show a direct link between food preference and genetic variants in humans. According to the data gathered, biology plays a paramount role in determining how food taste, appearance, smell, and texture appeal to certain people.
The study's participants were given access to an all-you-can-eat buffet of chicken korma, a type of curry dish. While the food was manipulated to taste and look the same, the levels of fat content were adjusted at 20 percent, 40 percent, and 60 percent.
Participants tested included lean people, obese people, and obese people with a defect in the gene MC4R. Researchers observed no differences in the amount of food eaten, although obese individuals with an MC4R defect showed a strong preference for higher fat content.
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During the study's dessert phase, participants were served Eton mess, a dessert that includes a mixture of strawberries, whipped cream, and broken meringue. In a sharp contrast to the first phase, lean and obese individuals showed a preference for high sugar content, while MC4R defective individuals ate less of all three desserts.
"Our work shows that even if you tightly control the appearance and taste of food, our brains can detect the nutrient content," lead researcher Sadaf Farooqi explained in a press release. "Most of the time we eat foods that are both high in fat and high in sugar. By carefully testing these nutrients separately in this study, and by testing a relatively rare group of people with the defective MC4R gene, we were able to show that specific brain pathways can modulate food preference."
Farooqi went on to theorize the differences in brain pathways determining food preference evolved out of a need to cope with scarcity.
"Fat delivers twice as many calories per gram as carbohydrates or protein and can be readily stored in our bodies," she continued. "As such, having a pathway that tells you to eat more fat at the expense of sugar, which we can only store to a limited extent in the body, would be a very useful way of defending against starvation."
