According to information from a new study, people suffering from mild depression will view the flavor of fatty foods similarly when they are in a good or bad mood. The results of this study were published on June 5 in the journal PLOS ONE.
The study was published by researchers Petra Platte and colleagues from the University of Wurzburg, Germany. For the study, the researchers sought to answer “how non-pathological levels of depression, anxiety and experimentally-manipulated moods could affect participants’ oral perceptions of fat and other taste stimuli like sweet, sour, bitter and umami flavors.”
During the study, the participants were given scores for their depression and anxiety symptoms, and then they were shown video clips of happy, sad and neutral scenes from different movies that were designed to put them in either a good mood, a bad one or a neutral mood. Then the participants were asked to rate different liquids that were based on how intense the flavors were. Next the participants were asked to gauge how much fat was in the milk samples by using mouth-feel.
The results were as follows: “After watching a happy or sad movie clip, participants with mild, subclinical signs of depression were unable to tell the difference between a high-fat and low-fat sample, whereas they could distinguish between the two after watching a clip from a neutral film, as well as before they watched the movies. These participants with higher depression scores also rated bitter and sweet tastes as being more intense after they watched the movie clips than they did before this mood-inducing exercise.”
The researchers have decided that the study may help authors conclude that their results may have potential implications for unhealthy eating patterns, as this inability to distinguish tastes may cause mildly depressed individuals to unconsciously eat more fatty food. This is interesting because previous studies have also shown that obese people are also more likely to suffer from depression, which is often treated with potentially dangerous SSRIs like Paxil. Paxil is linked to serious adverse effects. In fact, Paxil has been known to cause patients to suffer from violent and suicidal thoughts and behavior as well as lead to birth defects in babies born to mothers who take the pills while pregnant. The birth defects linked to Paxil use include PPHN, spina bifida, neural tube defects, oral clefts and heart, lung and brain defects.
——————-
