We'll set the scene, you're five days into the diet and you just want a little bit of chocolate, so you grab a biscuit and instead of indulging and ruining your diet you just have a little smell. No harm in having a little sniff, it's not going to change much. Or will it?
According to scientists in the US, they found that the small of food could play an important role in how the body processes calories.
The study, conducted on mice by a group of researchers at the University of California, cut off the sense of smell of a group of obese mice in order to test their theory. The results revealed that the mice who had lost their sense of smell shed more weight compared to those on the same diet that could still sniff their meals.
Smelling food could actually lead to the body storing it rather than burning it off.
The scientists believe that smelling food prior to eating could impact how the body processes calories. Sniffing your food could signal to the body that it should store the food as fat as opposed to burning it off.
"Sensory systems play a role in metabolism," says Andrew Dillin, a senior author of the study. "Weight gain isn't purely a measure of the calories taken in; it's also related to how those calories are perceived."
"If we can validate this in humans, perhaps we can actually make a drug that doesn't interfere with smell but still blocks that metabolic circuitry."
Well there goes us smelling our food before I dig in.
No comments:
Post a Comment