CCK is secreted by the small
intestine and aids in the digestion of fats and proteins.
It also serves as one of the “satiety signals,”
telling the brain when an individual is full and should
stop eating. This study first looked at both high and
low groups and how they performed with their normal amounts
of CCK and their fatty snacks. The high fat diet crowd
ate more of their snack than the low fat crowd. Researchers
then gave a dose of CCK to both groups halfway through
their snacks, sort of a CCK boost. The low fat diet group
stopped eating, while the high fat group kept shoveling
it in.
What this essentially shows is that, in rats at least,
those on a high fat diet can become desensitized to CCK.
In other words, the fast food rat doesn’t have a
trigger in his brain to tell him when he’s full,
resulting in sort of a self-perpetuating cycle. Additional
studies in the past suggest that this sort of phenomenon
works on humans as well.
While it sounds a bit clichéd, this is just further
proof of the following: it’s not just how much you
eat, but what you eat.
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