Fatty Foods Make Us Hungry—And Fat Here's a clue to the
virulence of the obesity epidemic. New research suggests the
hunger hormone ghrelin is activated by fats from the foods we
eat, not those made in the body. This natural process was
designed to optimize metabolism and promote the storage of body
fat. And this was useful when food was hard to come by and we
had to work physically hard to get it. Now it backfires on us in
the form of fat. Ghrelin—the hunger hormone—is believed to
accumulate during periods of fasting and is found in the body in
high concentrations just before meals. It's activated by a fatty
acid added by an enzyme called GOAT. Originally it was assumed
that the fatty acids attached to ghrelin by GOAT were produced
by the body during fasting. But the new data published in Nature
Medicine suggest the fatty acids needed for ghrelin activation
come directly from ingested dietary fats. Exposed to fatty
foods, mice with more GOAT gain more fat. Mice without GOAT gain
less fat since their brain ne