The science behind why you drink more beer when cooking

Aside from the fact that your friends have been looking for the best local craft brewers, the science may be discovering another reason why you keep looking for another one. And this one has nothing to do with your will.

In a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society at Experimental Biology 2019, scientists at the Penn State College of Medicine gave mice a number of different ways to feed themselves – some consuming high-fat foods, some Others eating normally – and giving them access to alcohol. . They discovered that mice consuming a lot of high-fat foods also drank more alcohol. This is perhaps not the most surprising discovery for all those who have already washed a good portion of ribs with several beers.

But that's why it's interesting: excessive consumption of high-fat foods can activate the same brain circuits as alcohol. "We think that an excessive consumption of alcohol leads to an awareness of this circuit – or at least a part of it – which is further enhanced by alcohol consumption," says Yuval Silberman, Ph.D., assistant professor in neurological and behavioral sciences and investigator director who worked on this study with Caitlin Coker, Ph.D. candidate and principal investigator on this project. In other words, high-fat foods start the circuits and may encourage you to keep them with alcohol.

The team did not want to vilify fat foods. Silberman's hope is "to help people understand that unrelated factors may lead to a loss of control over alcohol use," he says. Of course, the study was about mice, so we do not have much knowledge about what's going on in humans yet. "It's preliminary and I do not want to go too far, but I think there's always this idea that addiction and alcohol use disorder are a moral failure," he adds. But he hopes his research will help to understand that these are diseases of the brain and the body, and that changes in the brain may be responsible.