The city of Berkeley, California continues its quest to make its residents healthier, becoming the first city in the United States to ban sugary candy, sodas, and other junk foods from the checkout aisle. The banned food items are those with 5 grams of added sugars and 200 milligrams of sodium, chewing gum and mints with added sugars, and beverages with added sugars or artificial sweeteners.

Placement of unhealthy snacks near a register increases the likelihood that customers will purchase these foods and drinks when willpower is weak at the end of a long shopping trip…It’s not a ban, it’s a nudge. Stores can still sell candy and soda, just not at your child’s eye level in the checkout.”

Kate Harrison, Berkeley city council member and ordinance sponsor

The unanimously passed ordinance will go into effect in March of 2021. Grocery stores affected will include Safeway, Monterey Market, Whole Foods, and Berkeley Bowl.

Related: Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)

This is not the first time that Berkeley has taken a stand against sugary products. Last time it was sodas and sugary beverages, as Berkeley became the first city in the U.S. to implement a soda tax in 2014. That tax proved to be successful, as residents in affected areas reported drinking 52% fewer servings of sugary drinks. The city of Berkeley clearly wants to continue to offer its residents healthier options.

(NaturalNews – Ethan A. Huff) Millions of Americans who claim to be opposed to drug use are actually heavy drug users themselves, according to a new study out of France. Researchers from the University of Paris’ Functional and Adaptive Biology laboratory recently found that triglycerides, a type of fat often found in junk foods, act on the brain in the same manner as many street drugs, exposing an epidemic of inadvertent drug addiction via the standard American diet.

Serge Luquet and his team, publishing their findings in the April 15, 2014, issue of the journal Molecular Psychiatry, tested the effects of triglycerides on mice. Having previously learned that these lipid compounds stimulate certain areas of the brain associated with pleasure and reward, the team decided to see how mice reacted to having a steady supply of triglycerides infused directly into their brains.

A body conditioned to high fat intake will constantly seek it out like a drug fix

Compared to mice not receiving the triglycerides, the test mice were less motivated than control mice to seek out more food, indicating a dose-response effect from consuming the fats. All the mice were allowed to access special levers that dispensed various food rewards, but those mice given the triglycerides were less likely to have brain activity telling them to eat more.

On the flip side, the mice not given triglycerides were found to be much more compulsive when it came to getting their food. Much in the same way that drug addicts have to constantly seek out their next “fix” in order to function, the control mice, who like all mice naturally desire high-fat, high-sugar foods, tended toward obsessively craving the food rewards.

“[T]riglycerides, fatty substances from food, may act in our brains directly on the reward circuit, the same circuit that is involved in drug addiction,” reads a summary of the report.

Brain responds to fat intake the same way it responds to hard drugs

Using a fluorescence microscope to analyze the mice’s individual brain activity, the research team was able to ascertain a specific enzyme in the brain that decomposes triglycerides, producing feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. When this enzyme is removed or deactivated, as the researchers did with the test mice, the desire for fatty foods becomes insatiable, much in the same way that a drug addict goes through withdrawals when cut off from his preferred substances.

Interestingly, the infused mice tended toward reduced physical activity and decreased likelihood of balancing a diet of both high-fat foods and simpler foods, compared to control mice who were obsessed with trying to gain access to the fats.

Many obese people are ‘drug’ addicts to triglycerides, unhealthy foods

In the end, this constant desire for fatty foods can lead to binge eating and gluttony, which in turn results in obesity for many people. Not surprisingly, obese individuals tend to have excessively high levels of triglycerides in both their blood and brain, and are typically more sedentary than the average person.

“[W]ith obesity, blood (and therefore brain) triglyceride levels are higher than average,” reads a ScienceDaily.com summary of the study’s outcomes. “So obesity is often associated with overconsumption of sugary, fatty foods. … At high triglyceride contents, the brain adapts to obtain its reward, similar to the mechanisms observed when people consume drugs.”

You can read a full press release of the study here:
http://www2.cnrs.fr.

Sources for this article include:
http://www.sciencedaily.com
http://www2.cnrs.fr

(NaturalNews – Julie Wilson) The food industry is a sophisticated, calculating and very profitable enterprise that preys on consumer weaknesses, ones they’ve strategically created.

Food sellers have one priority when it comes to consumers, and it’s not their health, but rather assurance. They need you to keep coming back for more, and they achieve this by constructing foods, especially processed foods, with three critical ingredients.

The perfect combination of salt, sugar and fat makes food taste irresistible, triggering intense cravings in the brain. “Salt, sugar and fat are the three pillars of the processed food industry,” said Michael Moss, a New York Times reporter who has investigated the secrets of the food industry’s scientists.

“And while the industry hates the world ‘addiction’ more than any other word, the fact of the matter is, their research has shown them that when they hit the very perfect amounts of each of those ingredients… they will have us buy more, eat more.”

Teams of chemists, physicists and neuroscientists work diligently to develop foods that we can’t stop eating. These perfectly engineered products don’t just leave us craving more but can change the way we feel about healthy foods.

Proof that junk food makes us want fruits and veggies less

Excessive consumption of junk food can change behavior, weaken self-control and lead to overeating and obesity, according to a study by the School of Medical Sciences, UNSW Australia.

Published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, researchers discovered that feeding rats junk food made them fat and reduced their appetite for “novel foods.” Led by Professor Margaret Morris, experts taught young male rats to associate two different sound cues with flavors of sugar water — cherry and grape.

The rats raised on a healthy diet stopped responding to the cues linked to a flavor after having recently indulged in one of them. This biological signal is hardwired into animals, protecting them from overeating and promoting a balanced diet.

Rats that ate a diet filled with junk food for two weeks, including cookies, cakes, pie and dumplings, increased their weight by 10 percent and changed their behavior “dramatically.”

The rats “became indifferent in their food choices and no longer avoided the sound advertising the overfamiliar taste. This indicated that they had lost their natural preference for novelty,” the study observed.

Even after being back on a healthy diet, the behavior continued for quite some time, leading researchers to suggest that junk food causes lasting changes in the reward circuit parts of the rats’ brains.

The orbitofrontal cortex, an area of the brain containing the secondary taste cortex, is responsible for representing the reward value of taste. The food industry has learned to manipulate this decision-making process by using tactics that enhance food appeal.

The “crunch” factor is an important one. Studies show that people associate crunchy food with being more fresh or crispier. The louder the crunch, the better — at least in the food industry’s mind.

Food texture in general plays a big role in our desire to eat. Scientists working for Nestle developed oval-shaped chocolate, designed to melt more smoothly in the mouth, as opposed to rough-edged chocolate bars.

Flavor enhancers are one of the industry’s biggest secrets. Designed to keep their texture, boxed foods contain many ingredients that have nothing to do with taste, but instead preservation.

“Ingredients like that are kind of bundled under what may seem like relatively innocuous labels like ‘natural flavours’ or even ‘artificial flavours,’ when truly they are much more surprising when consumers really understand what it is,” said Bruce Bradley, a former food executive who worked for General Mills, Pillsbury and Nabisco.

“There’s tremendous amounts of money spent behind creating tastes and smells that feel real but in reality are completely artificial.”

Additional sources:
http://www.cbc.ca
http://www.eurekalert.org
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
http://www.nytimes.com
http://science.naturalnews.com