Saturday, March 3, 2012

Exercise and Food Reward

Given all the current interest in the Food Reward theories of obesity (check out Richard's post with a phenomenal number of comments), I thought I'd just point to this study that popped across my screen this morning:

Aerobic exercise reduces neuronal responses in food reward brain regions

Exercise reduced neuronal responses in brain regions consistent with reduced pleasure of food, reduced incentive motivation to eat, and reduced anticipation and consumption of food. Reduced neuronal response in these food reward brain regions after exercise is in line with the paradigm that acute exercise suppresses subsequent energy intake.

If Food Reward is an issue and I think it obviously is then we also need to think about exercise.

1 comment:

pyker said...

Interesting. NB they were all lean and active. Does exercise on non-fit have a different impact than on fit people? Maybe.

Also note a prior study that showed while exercise reduced immediate hunger, it did not reduce the total amount of food subsequently consumed (i.e. it just delayed the start of eating).