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The Hedonics of Food

Cake (via chatirygirl)

Two new words for you: ghrelin and hedonics. Let's start with ghrelin. It's your appetite hormone. When your stomach growls, thank ghrelin. After you eat, your ghrelin levels drop, but when it's been a while, the ghrelin gremlin returns, and when your ghrelin levels get really high, a new study shows, your brain goes haywire and all it wants is chocolate cake. Which leads us to the second word: Hedonics. In the study, subjects injected with ghrelin rated the appeal of foods. High calorie foods, particularly high calorie, sweet foods, got crazy high ratings. The researcher who led the study explains, "Changes in the hedonics of food -- how pleasurable we find food -- after missing meals or eating may be explained by levels of ghrelin circulating in the blood."  So basically, eat a hearty breakfast or you'll crave cake all day. Or don't, and you'll really enjoy that cake when you finally have it. But that's old news. The vocab is the exciting part! Points for the person who comes up with the best sentence using our two new words!