Brain cells known as tanycytes regulate our appetite, and they respond to two key amino acids that are especially found in more than 20 foods such as sirloin steak, chicken, mackerel, apricots, avocados and lentils.
Adding these foods to your diet sends messages to the tanycytes, and tells us we’re full. That could also mean we’re less likely to snack between meals.
Other foods could be just as filling, but the brain won’t get the message, and so we start feeling hungrier sooner, say researchers from the University of Warwick.
Leading the research is Prof Nicholas Dale, who has discovered tanycytes and their role in digestion. The tanycytes, located in the centre of our brain, sense amino acids that are released when we eat, and this has “very significant implications for coming up with new ways to help people to control their body weight within healthy bounds,” he said.
His discovery means that more effective diets could be devised. Instead of eating less, we just need to eat more of the foods that are rich in the amino acids that communicate with tanycytes.
The amino-rich foods are:
(Source: Molecular Metabolism, 2017; doi: 10.1016/j.molmet.2017.08.015)
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