Shocker: Obese Teens' Brains Susceptible to Food Commercials

Food Commercials Entice Overweight Teens the Most

by Monica Joshi

That smooth, creamy, melted chocolate streaming down from the whisk. A chocolate genius looking at you and that melting chocolate with his dreamy eyes. The eye catching way that the melted chocolate turns into a truffle. Got you salivating yet? That's the Lindor commercial that none of us can resist. Imagine seeing that while already having some severe problems with food... your desire to acquire the truffles might just be greater than you thought.

A new study from Dartmouth finds that TV food commercials disproportionately stimulate the brains of over-weight teens. In fact, they stimulate the regions that control pleasure, taste and even the mouth suggesting that they mentally endorse unhealthy eating habits.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers examined brain responses in overweight and healthy adolescents aged 12 – 16. The two dozen fast food and non-food commercials were embedded within an age-appropriate show “The Big Bang Theory”. The results showed that in all adolescents, the brain regions involved in attention and focus and in processing rewards were strongly active while viewing food commercials as opposed to non-food commercials. Adolescents with a higher body fat percentage showed greater reward related activity than healthy weight teens.

According to the researchers, the most surprising finding was that the food commercials also activated the overweight adolescents' brain region that controls their mouth.

Lead author Kristina Rapuano, a graduate student in Dartmouth’s Brain Imaging Lab said:

“This finding suggests the intriguing possibility that overweight adolescents mentally simulate eating while watching food commercials. These brain responses may demonstrate one factor whereby unhealthy eating behaviours become reinforced and turned into habits that potentially hamper a person’s ability lose weight later in life.”

Put simply, the brain's reward circuitry involves the release of the dopamine and other neurotransmitters that give pleasure and can lead to addictive behaviour.

The real question is, why did we need a study to tell us this painfully obvious result? Children and adolescents watch roughly 13 food commercials per day on average. It is totally unsurprising that the reward-response part of the brain would be active during the viewing of said food commercials.

Once a child tastes the double cheeseburger from McDonald's and loves the taste, they will know and want the cheeseburger. It shouldn't, therefore, be a surprise that a food commercial would trigger the reward-response part of the brain especially since they now know the taste of said cheeseburger and would desire it. Going even one step further, as aforementioned, looking at a chocolate commercial makes anyone salivate, regardless of how much they weigh. Hence, the fact that looking at food commercials makes obese teens have a physiological reaction in the mouth is equally unsurprising. 

What's next? A study that shows that people who are diabetic are highly susceptible to candy and chocolate commercials? The unfortunate reality in this world is that what tastes good and appeals to our sensory pleasures is awful for our bodies. We most definitely, however, do not need a study to remind us of that fact.