Junk food consumption is increasing day by day. Not only youngsters and teenagers, every age group is getting addicted to junk food. The new study stated that women are more attracted to junk food and it finds difficult to say no to junk food as easily as men do. The study was published in FASEB Journal which stated that the intensity of junk food cravings depends a lot on a mother's diet during late pregnancy.

“We have found differences between males and females. Our experiments showed that eating a healthy diet during adolescence could reverse the junk-food preference in males but not females,” said Jessica Gugusheff, post-doctoral researcher at University of Adelaide in Australia. “Too much junk food consumed late in pregnancy for humans has the potential to be more harmful to the child than excess junk food early in the pregnancy", she added.

The junk food preference is believed to result from a desensitisation of the normal reward system (the opioid and dopamine signalling pathway) fuelled by highly palatable high fat, high sugar diets. Offspring with less sensitive reward systems need more fat and sugar to get the same "good feeling". "This brain area grows at its fastest during these critical windows and is therefore most susceptible to alteration at these times," project leader Beverly Muhlhausler from University of Adelaide explained.

AW: Lizitha