The greater the Obesity, it tastes the better the chocolate

Why some people eat more than others? A study from America that this could be due to the fact that it tastes like some of the longer and better than the other. And this seems, in turn, the BMI appears to be linked.

For the study, which was published in the “Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics”, were allowed to eat as much chocolate as they wanted. Part of the study, 290 people between the ages of 18 and 75 were, on the whole, more than 80 percent of them were women. 160 participants according to BMI normal overweight, 78 obese and 51 were obese, so obese.

Chocolate, Questionnaires, Chocolate, Questionnaire

The participants were given by the researchers from the University of Iowa, an individually wrapped chocolate piece after the other – after each piece, you should fill in a short questionnaire. It was about the experience of taste and your sense of satiety. Everyone was allowed to eat as much chocolate as he could without feeling uncomfortable. The range was large: on the whole, the Studied ate between two and 51 of the piece of chocolate.

The results: Morbidly obese, obese participants rated the chocolate is generally tasty and your Request, then took off slower than the other study participants. A difference between the perception of the chocolate between normal – and overweight participants were not able to find the researchers.

The upper line shows how good the chocolate tasted in the obese subjects in the course of the experiment. In the fine dashed line the values of the Overweight are shown with the solid line of the normal weight.

The graphic from the study shows that the obese participants would work out the taste of the chocolate on a scale of 1 to 10, significantly higher than the other.

The first piece tastes better than the tenth

The investigation is also a question of how much of the taste during the consumption change – other studies were mostly just before and after a meal is measured. The first piece of chocolate tasted almost every better than the tenth, which was attended by more than 80 percent of the study participants, so true. On average each person ate about 12 pieces. The largest outlier, with 51 pieces, incidentally, was a normal weight.

You consume a lot of food, going to the consumer with less and less satisfactory, says the study. This phenomenon is called “perception-specific saturation”. Our taste sensors are bored with the time, according to the study, if you are getting the Same taste.

At least in the case of the study group, this saturation occurred in obese subjects later: Obese women had to eat 12,5 pieces in order to taste the same exercise as normal weight after 10 pieces. This phenomenon could explain, according to the researchers, in part, why Obese individuals eat more than others.

Obesity to better understand

However, you can not transfer your results to other types of food, the researchers write. Bitter or salty taste impressions could lead to different results. And also the high proportion of women could have distorted the results, says the study.

Whether the Obese eat more, can not answer the study as well. The obese subjects ate an average of only a half a piece more than the overweight. On the other, the amount consumed may be biased, as participants under laboratory conditions, there is a different behavior than usually, in the study.

Nevertheless, the findings of this study will be valuable, says the researcher, Linnea A. Polgreen. “If people have perceptions with obesity different Taste than Non-Obese, could help to understand obesity better and to develop ways to avoid them.”

Unclear to the researchers, however, is still: Has led to a different perception of taste to obesity, or the obesity has changed the taste?