The secret of the taste of food that, if you try it, you always want to eat more

[Inkriql]

It seems that it is not necessary to demonstrate that the food industry has the secret formula to design irresistible flavors, of those that make one bite take us to the next, no matter how much we want to avoid it. After the books and documentaries that have pointed to the existence of this knowledge, it is a capacity that is practically taken for granted; After all, everyone knows what it costs to stop eating some chips or a piece of pizza after the first bite. But scientific analyzes had not proposed the formula with which so much flavor can be achieved so far.

Small studies and experiments have been done that point out that a certain combination of fats and salt can increase the palatability of a food up to 30%, which is its quality to be pleasant to the palate. And, last year, a neuroimaging work concluded that high-fat and carbohydrate meals strongly activate the reward brain circuits, the mechanism that drives us to eat to survive. Now, in an interesting step forward, researchers from the University of Kansas, in the United States (USA), have proposed a way to detect these hyperpalatable foods just by looking at the composition on the nutritional label (or from a database of food composition).

The new work, which has been published in Obesity magazine, identifies three food groups that are distinguished by their proportions of fat, sodium, sugar and carbohydrates. According to the study, hyperpalatability appears when more than 20% of calories come from fat and many others from sugar; when more than 25% of the calories come from fat and 0.3% of the product's weight, or more, is sodium; and when more than 40% of the calories come from carbohydrates and the sodium content is equal to or greater than 0.2%. Among them are cakes, cereals, some meat products, pizza, pasta and salty snacks, but there are also surprises.
The hyperpalatability of arugula and carrot

The text of the new work describes as "immense" the contribution of hyperpalatable foods to increase the risk of obesity, because, the authors argue, make us eat more and relax the physiological mechanisms that warn us that we are satiated. With the damage to health that this disease entails, it seems sensible to conclude that it is necessary to limit them. But, although it is positive to have the ability to detect food that, in addition to having a poor nutritional profile, can make diners consume more than the bill, the new work provides enough nuances to think twice.

If you apply the parameters of the three groups of hyperpalatable foods to the products you put in the shopping cart, you will come to surprising conclusions such as sweets, bacon, a hamburger and a pizza are among them. But you will also get less predictable results, such as avocado and roasted potatoes are within the definition proposed by scientists. Arugula, because of its sodium content and rich in carbohydrates, is also hyperpalatable, according to this definition.

The categories are so open that 62% of the 7,700 foods that the researchers analyzed, which are part of a database that reflects the food commonly consumed in the US, fit into at least one of the groups. The majority - 70% - meet the criteria of combining fat and sugar, 25% enter the fat and sodium and only 16% belong to carbohydrates and sodium. Scientists recognize that limiting so many foods is not possible, and point out that many times they do not justify their hyperpalatability by themselves.

Many times it is the way of cooking or processing the food that makes them hyperpalatable: 81% of 478 meals selected for their ingredients had been prepared, at a minimum, in a way that made it meet the definition of hyperpalatable. A large part of them could have been cooked without the synergy between nutrients that makes the flavor much more attractive than what each would provide separately. A clear example is the carrot glazed and cooked with butter.