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Evolutionary forces have wired our brains to prefer and consume energy-dense foods to aid in our survival. While effective during periods of limited access, the ubiquitous nature of high-fat food sources in society leads to obesity and numerous related health complications. Exacerbating this drive to consume more energy-dense, palatable foods is a devaluation of less appetitive, nutritionally-balanced foods. While this preference for calorically-rich foods is well known, significant gaps exist in our understanding of how this develops and leads to devaluation.
Laboratory mice are typically provided with ad libitum access to a well-balanced standard chow diet (SD) in which the macronutrient composition has been formulated for optimal growth. Introduction to ad libitum high fat diet (HFD), but not a high-sucrose diet, leads to rapid weight gain, at least in part due to excessive caloric intake. Interestingly, when mice are given a choice between ad libitum access to both SD and HFD, they strongly prefer consumption of the latter at the expense of the former. While this predilection for HFD over SD during prolonged exposure is well described, how rapidly this transition occurs under physiological or artificial hunger is less known. Removal of HFD from mice given the choice between HFD and SD, akin to a strict human diet, results in rapid weight loss due to the self-restricted consumption of SD. Additionally, mice fed a HFD will forgo SD consumption even in states of physiological or artificially-induced caloric deprivation. While this SD devaluation is robustly conserved between sex and subject and independent of fat mass accrual, the causative nature of this phenomenon is not well understood.
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You are what you eat
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