Wondering why you tend to pick junk food over healthy food? Well, scientists reveal that your brain is responsible for the choice of food you make.

In the study published in Psychological Science, researchers from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University and the McGill University Health Centre, suggested that choosing what a person eats is beyond the matter of taste. It’s the brain that decides what food choice you’ll make when to have a glance over a menu in the restaurant or brands in a supermarket. And, sadly their brain decides it based on the food’s caloric content.

For the study, healthy participants were asked to look at pictures of various healthy and unhealthy foods. Later they were told to provide a rough estimate of calorie content of the foods, reports thehealthsite.com.

They were asked which foods they would prefer to consume. Although participants were poor in determining calorie content of the foods, their choices remained concentrated on foods rich in calories content.

Based on the brain scans of the participants, the researchers found that it’s the brain activity that tracked the true caloric content of foods and that the decisions regarding food consumption and caloric density were linked to a part of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area that encodes the value of stimuli and predicts immediate consumption.

According to lead author of the study Dr. Alain Dagher, the results helps in determining how people’s awareness of caloric content influenced the brain areas known to be implicated in evaluating food options. Understanding the reasons for people’s food choices could help to control the factors that lead to obesity, which is linked to many health problems including high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.

Reasons why junk food is bad for health

1. Junk food may be the reason behind your fatigue: Although junk food and fast food makes you feel full and satisfied, they lack all the necessary nutrients like proteins and carbohydrates to keep your body energized and healthy.

If you eat junk food every time you’re hungry, you may feel chronically fatigued. It can lower your energy levels to an extent that it may become difficult for you to even perform your daily tasks.

2. Junks food may lead to depression in teenagers: A lot of hormonal changes take place in teenagers which makes them susceptible to mood swings and behavioral changes. And a healthy diet plays an important role in maintaining that hormonal balance. Because junk foods lack those essential nutrients, the likelihood of teenagers to suffer from depression is increased by 58 percent.

3. It impairs digestion: Those who are addicted to fatty junk food are bound to have digestive problems like gastro esophageal reflux disease (GERD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). That’s because junk food is deep fried. So, the oil from the junk food gets deposited in the stomach causing acidity. They cause irritation of the stomach lining because they are too spicy, and they also lack fiber which is important for proper digestion.

BDST: 2000 HRS, OCT 23, 2014