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BATON ROUGE -- Women who have a tendency to overeat may be sensitive to chocolate which can elevate their appetite if it is consumed at the wrong time, LSU researchers find.
In a study of 59 women, LSU associate psychology professor Paula Geiselman and professor Donald Williamson, graduate student Cheryl Smith and four other researchers at Pennington Biomedical Research Center found that women with overeating problems who ate a high sugar, high fat chocolate pudding when they were premenstrual subsequently ate more than three times as much pasta for lunch than did women who do not have overeating problems.
The study points up the complex interaction between dietary, behavioral and physiological factors that predispose women to weight gain, said Geiselman.
The women were selected on the basis of a test showing that they had either an above-average or a below-average tendency to overeat.
"The data indicate that, during the premenstrual phase, which is dominated by the production of progesterone, women who have a habitual problem with overeating are hypersensitive to the taste of a food that can provoke overeating," Geiselman said.
The women were given four dishes of chocolate pudding varying in sugar and fat content to taste and rate, then were given a dish of the high sugar, high fat pudding to eat. Afterward they were given a large bowl of pasta and told they could eat as much or as little of it as they pleased.
The study showed that women with a tendency to overeat liked the high sugar, high fat pudding more during the premenstrual phase and they ate more pasta.
"We found that how well the women liked the taste of the chocolate food was positively and significantly associated with their eating behavior. The more they liked the pudding, the hungrier they reported they were, the more pudding they ate, the larger the bites they took of it, the more they liked a pasta subsequently presented to them for lunch, the more they ate of the pasta, and the faster the rate at which they ate it.
Those with a below-average tendency to overeat ate more of the pasta during the preovulatory phase than they did in the premenstrual phase. There was no difference between the two groups of women in the amount of pasta eaten in the preovulatory phase.
The study indicates that previous research on other mammals, which shows progesterone produces overeating and an increase in body weight, is relative to humans.
Women have twice the incidence of major weight gain as men, and 40 percent of U.S. women are attempting to diet, Geiselman said. "Dieting efforts appear to be particularly dangerous in some women. Many women suffer from a ëbinge and purge' pattern of dieting in addition to other eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia."
The team's findings will be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, to be held in New Orleans on Oct. 25-30.
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