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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071012/ap_on_he_
me/diet_chocolate_craving
"WASHINGTON - If that craving for chocolate
sometimes feels like it is coming from deep
in your gut, that's because maybe it is.
A small study links the type of bacteria
living in people's digestive system to a
desire for chocolate. Everyone has a vast
community of microbes in their guts. But
people who crave daily chocolate show signs
of having different colonies of bacteria than
people who are immune to chocolate's allure.
That may be the case for other foods, too.
The idea could eventually lead to treating
some types of obesity by changing the
composition of the trillions of bacteria
occupying the intestines and stomach, said
Sunil Kochhar, co-author of the study. It
appears Friday in the peer-reviewed Journal
of Proteome Research.
Kochhar is in charge of metabolism research
at the Nestle Research Center in Lausanne,
Switzerland. The food conglomerate Nestle SA
paid for the study. But this isn't part of an
effort to convert a few to the dark side (or
even milk) side of cocoa, Kocchar said.
In fact, the study was delayed because it
took a year for the researchers to find 11
men who don't eat chocolate.
Kochhar compared the blood and urine of those
11 men, who he jokingly called "weird" for
their indifference to chocolate, to 11
similar men who ate chocolate daily. They
were all healthy, not obese, and were fed the
same food for five days.
The researchers examined the byproducts of
metabolism in their blood and urine and found
that a dozen substances were significantly
different between the two groups. For
example, the amino acid glycine was higher in
chocolate lovers, while taurine (an active
ingredient in energy drinks) was higher in
people who didn't eat chocolate. Also
chocolate lovers had lower levels of the bad
cholesterol, LDL.
The levels of several of the specific
substances that were different in the two
groups are known to be linked to different
types of bacteria, Kochhar said.
Still to be determined is if the bacteria
cause the craving, or if early in life
people's diets changed the bacteria, which
then reinforced food choices.
How gut bacteria affect people is a hot field
of scientific research.
Past studies have shown that intestinal
bacteria change when people lose weight, said
Dr. Sam Klein, an obesity expert and
professor of medicine at Washington
University in St. Louis.
Since bacteria interact with what you eat, it
is logical to think that there is a
connection between those microbes and desires
for certain foods, said Klein, who wasn't
part of Kochhar's study.
Kochhar's research makes so much sense that
people should have thought of it earlier,
said J. Bruce German, professor of food
chemistry at the University of California
Davis. While five outside scientists thought
the study was intriguing, Dr. Richard Bergman
at the University of Southern California
School of Medicine, had concerns about the
accuracy of the initial division of the men
into groups that wanted chocolate or were
indifferent to it.
What matters to Kochhar is where the research
could lead.
Kochhar said the relationship between food,
people and what grows in their gut is
important for the future: "If we understand
the relationship, then we can find ways to
nudge it in the right direction.""
Tags : chocolate craving food bacteria microbe water implications new study biochemistry hater term better label |
