Snack News: Scientific Proof: There really is always room for dessert!

Many of us believe that dessert goes into a second stomach. In Japan, they have a word for it: betsubara. Now, the Japanese have proven that it’s true, in a sense.

On the Kaitai Shin Show in June, gastroenterologist Shigeki Koyama of the Kusatsu General Hospital fed two women a large meal of French food until they were full. Each woman was then put into an MRI machine, and we saw their stomachs, and that they were indeed full.

The women were then shown a piece of cake. Merely looking at the cake was enough to cause the stomach to make more room by pushing food into the intestines. On the MRI of the first woman we could see the stomach narrowing, and pulsing at the opening to the intestines. On the MRI of the second we saw that the small amount of room left in her stomach at the end of the meal had gotten bigger.

Back in the studio, professor Takashi Yamamoto of Kio University explained how the brain caused this to happen. When blood sugar rises, the satiety center of the brain tells us to stop eating. But when we see cake, the feeding center of the brain releases beta endorphins, which cause excitement and euphoria and the desire to eat cake.

This also triggers the release of dopamine. These chemicals stimulate the feeding center, which tells us to eat, in a message that drowns out the message of the satiety center.

What’s more, the feeding center secretes orexin, which moves food into the intestines, making room for the cake, as we saw on the MRI.

Sweets cause the most beta endorphin to be released, which is why sweet desserts cause this effect. And unfortunately for some of us, females are more sensitive to beta endorphin than males, so the effect is stronger. Another study, with rats, showed that when given unlimited access to sugar water, female rats would drink twice as much over a 24 hour period as males.

So order that dessert, ladies. It’s biology!

Unfortunately there is no English website for this show. If you get NHK World, its title is translated into English as “Variety Show: The Human Body.” The only English information I could find was the following deep and mysterious comment on the Japanese title:

On a new medical program, Kaitaishin Show

(Comment by Katsuhiro Inoue, Senior Producer, Program Development, Program Production Department)
The title is a pun on the Japanese title, Kaitaishinsho, of Kulmus’s great Anatomische Tabellen. The program is designed to answer simple questions about the human body from a scientific perspective.

5 Comments

Leave a Comment

Username (required) :
Email (required) :
Web Site :
Comment :

Comment moderation is enabled. Your comment may take some time to appear.