Could a drink before dinner make you eat more?

• May 2, 2024

Drinking a glass of wine or other alcohol before dinner can make some people eat more by focusing the brain's attention on food flavors, a study suggests.

This result offers an explanation for the call "Appetizer effect" - where some people they feel more hungry when they drink, say the researchers who published this study in the July issue of the journal Obesidad.

"The joke is that every restaurant knows that if they give you a drink first, you're going to eat more," says Robert Considine, one of the study's authors, who is a professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.

In this new research work Considine and her colleagues found, using magnetic resonance imaging, that on average Alcohol motivated a particular area of ​​the brain - the hypothalamus - and what makes you focus on food aromas, compared to other types of odors.

The hypothalamus produces hormones that help govern various body functions, including starvation says Considine, and this "seemed to direct the brain to pay more attention to food after consuming a drink."

However, the findings do not mean weight gain for consumers, so it could be taken a glass of wine with dinner, said Mantin Binks, an obesity researcher, who does not participate in the study.

Binks points out several reasons to make this claim: most of the time alcohol increases the intake of food but only in a small amount of affected; one third, in fact, we eat less In addition, it was found that the study group were in the normal weight range.

"We know that when people are obese, the brain tends to respond differently [to food], compared to non-obese people," says Binks, an associate professor of nutrition science at the University of California. Texas Tech University, in Lubbock, Texas.

Even more important, Binks mentions that appetite and weight control are extremely complex. And there is one thing clear. "There is no measure for diets, or a magic ball against the obesity "he adds.

"The important thing about this study," Binks said, "is that it talks about the complexity of appetite regulation, there are hundreds of influences on eating behavior, and this [alcohol intake] is one of them."

Considine on the other hand points out that people do not have to ban alcohol from their lives, in part because research suggests that a glass of red wine with dinner can be a healthy habit for the heart.

"Our findings are not intended to deny the potential benefits of red wine," says Considine.

However, he adds that it is important for people who are taking care of their weight to remind them, first of all, that Alcohol contains many calories.  

Video Medicine: Can You Drink Water When You Eat? (May 2024).