Study looks at why fatty foods help to lift our mood

When you're feeling blue and crave a snack, what do you reach for? Chances are it's more likely to be macaroni and cheese than carrot sticks.

Now, new research suggests fatty food really can help lift our moods -- but contrary to what you might think, it's not the "mouth feel" or the way the food looks that does it; it's the fat itself hitting out stomachs.


For the experiment, conducted at the University of Manchester, 12 healthy men and women were put on 12-hour fasts and then given direct infusions into their stomachs of either a saltwater saline solution or fatty acid solution. The participants couldn't taste the solutions and weren't told which one they had received.

During four days of experiments, the participants underwent 40-minute fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) neurologic scans in which they listened to either sad or neutral music while viewing images of sad or neutral faces.

They were then given the solutions and asked questions about their mood, as well as about their feelings of fullness or hunger.

The participants reported more hunger while listening and viewing sad emotions, and less hunger during neutral emotion conditions.

As well, those who got the fatty acid solution reported feeling about half as sad as those who received the saline infusion. The fMRI results also showed that their behavioral and nerve cell responses to sad emotions were also lessened.


The study was published Monday in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The authors concede that the study was relatively small, and that the findings need to be confirmed by further research.

But they say this may be the first study looking at the connection food and mood, in which the participants weren't able to tell what kind of food they were receiving.

Lead author Dr. Lukas Van Oudenhove, a psychiatrist at the Translational Research Centre for Gastrointestinal Disorders at the University of Leuven in Belgium, said the findings could have implications for the study of eating disorders.

"…It may indeed open possibilities for depression research, obesity research," he told the Canadian Press.

Dr. Giovanni Cizza, who co-authored a commentary in the journal and who is chief of the neuroendocrinology section of obesity at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, said the study took a new approach to studying how food affects mood.

"The mind-body connection has been explored in the direction from the mind to the body. Something I like about this study is that it starts from the body, from the stomach and it goes to the brain," he told CP.

He described the research as "a very good start" but said it would be interesting to see if the experiments had the same effect on obese people.

"The proof of principle that you can manipulate sadness by putting something in the stomach is very important," he said.