A photo opportunity for Nudge-it researcher, Suzanne Dickson, with Professor Kenji Kangawa, who discovered the appetite-promoting hormone, ghrelin. Suzanne gave a keynote lecture on her recent work with ghrelin at the International Symposium on Ghrelin and Energy Metabolism Homeostasis, held in Kyoto. The Nudge-it project is about dietary choice and Suzanne's team have recently shown that ghrelin guides dietary choice, both in normal rats and in rats binging on a high fat diet. Given that ghrelin promotes reward behaviours for food, we had expected to find that ghrelin increases intake of sugar and fat. What we found is that rats injected with ghrelin start to eat more of their regular chow, arguably a “healthier option”.
Prof Kangawa and his team are continuing to pursue clinical applications of ghrelin, especially for promoting food intake in cachectic patients. Cachexia is a multi-factorial syndrome defined by an ongoing loss of skeletal muscle mass (with or without loss of fat mass) that cannot be reversed by conventional nutritional support and leads to progressive functional impairment. Therefore this new information from Nudge-it is important and relevant for dietary choice behaviour in such patient groups.A photo opportunity for Nudge-it researcher, Suzanne Dickson, with Professor Kenji Kangawa, who discovered the appetite-promoting hormone, ghrelin. Suzanne gave a keynote lecture on her recent work with ghrelin at the International Symposium on Ghrelin and Energy Metabolism Homeostasis, held in Kyoto. The Nudge-it project is about dietary choice and Suzanne's team have recently shown that ghrelin guides dietary choice, both in normal rats and in rats binging on a high fat diet. Given that ghrelin promotes reward behaviours for food, we had expected to find that ghrelin increases intake of sugar and fat. What we found is that rats injected with ghrelin start to eat more of their regular chow, arguably a “healthier option”.
Prof Kangawa and his team are continuing to pursue clinical applications of ghrelin, especially for promoting food intake in cachectic patients. Therefore this new information from Nudge-it is important and relevant for dietary choice behaviour in such patient groups.
