Don't Worry, Monkeys Overeat Too
Passive female monkeys overeat to cope with stress. A recent article available on the website Science Daily reports on the finding. “Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have found socially subordinate female rhesus macaques over-consume calorie-rich foods at a significantly higher level than do dominant females.”
Among these monkeys there is a strict social hierarchy. The monkeys were given two food dispensers, one high-fat and one low-fat. They dominant female monkeys not only ate less overall, they kept their eating to daylight hours. The subordinate female monkeys ate more of both the high and low fat food, and they continuously ate at odd hours throughout a 24-hour period.
Like humans, eating a high calorie diet resulted in weight gain and “an increase in fat-derived hormones in subordinate females.” This study indicates to researchers that these subordinate monkeys are on the fast track for “metabolic problems.” These monkeys “prefer the high-fat diet and, as a result of the stress of being a subordinate, they have higher levels of the hormone cortisol. This may be involved in the redistribution of fat to visceral locations in the body, something that is clinically associated with type II diabetes metabolic syndrome.”
Researchers are fast at work trying to figure out why these monkeys are, well, emotional eaters. Researchers hope to discover “specifically, whether appetite signals and brain areas associated with reward and satisfaction differ between subordinate and dominant females.”
Bookmark
Email This
Hits: 835
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
What is 'Eat'?
You know it's true: you are what you eat. We want to explore not only what you eat, but how, when, and with whom. Read more...
