One of my guilty pleasures is to go on Instagram and look at the food porn accounts. Why? Because the food looks so good and here at college I am not eating anything close to what is being posted. But now some studies are saying that this could make you gain weight. Is this really true?
Japanese researchers conducted an experiment on mice to see if this theory is true. The researchers studied orexin-A, a protein known to be activated by physical activity, thoughts, and mood in the brain. By injecting this in to the mice, their glucose increased and caused an insulin-induced glucose to also increase. This sent a message to the skeletal muscles which, caused their bodies to fuel up on energy. These affects were shown more in the mice which did not have many beta-adrenergic receptors, receptors responsible for a fight or flight response in cells. The orexin also caused VMH neurons to increase muscle glucose metabolism, which goes to show orexin is a key part in activating muscle nerves.
From all of this it’s concluded that the excitement for a treat triggers a response in muscles to gather glucose to prepare for the meal. If the muscle is not used, then the glucose is stored as fat.
Marc David, a consultant in nutritional psychology, states that people on diets often fantasize about the foods they can’t eat. Due to this, insulin production is increased, and since the people are not eating their forbidden foods, the insulin is then stored as fat. David calls this “non-caloric weight gain”, when your body is in a phase of cephalic insulin response and produces insulin when it is not needed.
One positive aspect of increased insulin is the affect that it has on physical activity. Mark Febbraio, a professor of cell biology at Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, states that for someone running a marathon, they just fuel up on carbs and the thought of it. The extra insulin in the muscles can lead to the body burning more fat.
From all of this information, it is concluded that the extra insulin from thoughts about delicious foods is better in a case when you need to exert physical activity. In my case when I am laying in bed and looking at food, is causing me more harm than good.
I can 100% relate to looking at pictures of food on Instagram; I do it all the time. However, I am not entirely convinced from this study that just by looking at pictures, we could be gaining weight. There isn’t much of a strong correlation between these mice and humans. This study seems very vague and has little support to back up its evidence. I think the extra insulin could be a false positive or that this entire study could be a fluke. There are no meta analyses provided. If we are going to really investigate the effects of looking at pictures of food on Instagram, we would need to test it on humans of a wide range of ages and genders, and evaluate any confounding variables that would contribute to weight gain.