Food Liking Enhances the Plasma Response of 2-Arachidonoylglycerol and of Pancreatic Polypeptide upon Modified Sham Feeding in Humans

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Pancreatic Polypeptide.

The aims of this study were the following: 1) to elucidate the plasma responses of endocannabinoids, N-acylethanolamines, and gastrointestinal peptides to a palatable (sweet), unpalatable (bitter), and sensory-acceptable (tasteless control) food, and 2) to verify whether some of these bioactive compounds can serve as plasma biomarkers of food liking in humans.

Why It Was Studied

The mechanisms behind this observation are still largely unknown.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 11 women taking part.

The age groups tagged for this paper are young adults and adults, both men and women.

Twenty healthy subjects (11 women and 9 men; mean age 28 y and BMI 22.7 kg/m(2)), selected because they liked the puddings in the order sweet > control > bitter, participated in a randomized crossover study based on a modified sham feeding (MSF) protocol.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and crossover study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Pancreatic Polypeptide and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

In the crossover set-up each of the women took both Pancreatic Polypeptide and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

Blood samples at baseline and every 5 min up to 20 min after the MSF were analyzed for gastrointestinal peptides, endocannabinoids, and N-acylethanolamines.

Thirty minutes after the MSF, energy intake at an ad libitum breakfast was measured.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Amides, Arachidonic Acids, Blood Glucose, Body Mass Index, Edetic Acid, Endocannabinoids and Energy Intake.

Author keywords: appetite control, bitter-tasting food, cephalic phase response, energy intake control, food palatability and gastrointestinal peptides.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and crossover study of Pancreatic Polypeptide in 11 women.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Its findings take up roughly 6 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2015 (The Journal of nutrition), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Pancreatic Polypeptide compound page, all human trials.