It can be hard to remember exactly what and how much you ate when you grabbed a quick meal at your desk or while scrolling through your phone. New research suggests that your brain is actually keeping careful tabs on everything you put in your mouth. However, distracted eating could mess with its natural food-logging process. Cue you, eating more than you planned.
This new science, published in Nature Communications, was done on rats, making it hard to say for sure that it applies to humans. But experts say there’s a definite takeaway to keep in mind. This will help lower the odds you’ll eat more than you planned during your next meal or snack. Here’s why.
What did the study find?
For the study, researchers used special techniques to observe the brain activity of lab rats as they ate. The researchers discovered that neurons in an area of the brain called the ventral hippocampus region (which is linked to hunger and eating behaviour) become active during eating. These formed what they dubbed “meal engrams.” Those meal engrams are special memory traces that store information about the food that was eaten, the researchers explained in the paper. Consider it a mental food log of sorts.
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Fun fact: The researchers also found that the meal engrams were created during small pauses between bites. During these pauses, the lab rats naturally surveyed their eating environment.
The neurons tied to meal memory are different from other types of brain cells linked to memory formations. Furthermore, when the researchers blocked those meal-memory neurons, the lab rats couldn’t remember how much they had. As a result, they ended up overeating.
There’s a major takeaway here
The study gets admittedly technical from there and, again, this was on rats—not humans. But there is something to be learned from this.
Auriel A. Willette, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Neurology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, calls the findings “fascinating.” He points out that they add to what scientists already know about the hippocampus area of the brain. “By interrupting a memory trace, one is relying on the gastrointestinal system to signal satiety,” he says. And that has its downsides.
“The amount of food that is consumed during a snack or meal is not completely determined by our biological ‘satiation’ signals,” says study co-author Scott E. Kanoski, PhD, co-director of the Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute at University of Southern California. “Rather, complex cognitive, social, and hedonic factors powerfully determine how much we eat. One such factor is our memory for recent eating episodes. The better these events are remembered, hunger is reduced and less food is consumed. The weaker these events are remembered, hunger is increased and more food is consumed.”
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That’s why the findings underscore the importance of paying attention when you eat, says Albert Matheny, RD, CSCS, co-founder of SoHo Strength Lab. That attention allows you to form those meal engrams and actually log them appropriately. Consequently, your brain is clued into how much you’ve eaten. “We know that if you make an event around eating or if you’re mindfully eating, it leads to you being more satiated,” he says. “That’s the same thing here.”
Mir Ali, MD, medical director of MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA, agrees. “There’s more to eating than just getting the calories your body needs to function,” he says. “Especially in humans, the brain plays a big role in hunger.”
Ultimately, Ali recommends doing what you can to focus on your food when you’re eating. “If you’re eating in front of the TV or computer screen and not really paying attention to how much and what you’re eating, that can potentially be detrimental,” he says. Matheny co-signs that advice. “Set aside space for meals and make eating intentional,” he says. Not only can it help curb overeating, being aware of what you actually put in your mouth could make your mealtime experience even better. Willette agrees.
This article by Korin Miller was originally appeared on Men’s Health US
