There’s no doubt that eating your favorite food is pleasurable, and that sometimes overindulging is simply extending that pleasure. Recent studies suggest that it isn’t hunger that triggers the satisfaction you feel from eating, but a hormone that triggers those feelings.

Researchers from Yale University School of Medicine have isolated an appetite hormone, ghrelin, that they say activates neurons that give a sense of pleasure and satisfaction.

When ghrelin was infused into the brains of rats, they ate ravenously even if they were already well-fed. Ghrelin is made in the stomach and acts upon receptors in the brain to trigger appetite and eating.

Researchers hope that by finding a drug that interferes with the ghrelin receptors in the brain, they could find a treatment for some eating disorders.

Hormone Held Responsible For Eating Pleasures