Brain ‘can be trained to prefer healthy food’

American scientists claim __________ a special and unique weight-loss programme.

According to the scientists, the diet not only doesn’t leave people hungry, but also trains the brain to prefer healthy food __________ unhealthy food.

They say food addictions can be changed even if they are well-established. They scanned the brains of a small group of people after the treatment and the results showed increased __________ for healthy lower-calorie foods.

According to a behavioural nutrition scientist, we don't start out in life loving French fries and hating genuinely healthy food like whole- __________ pasta.

This conditioning happens over time in response to what we eat, in response to eating what is out there in the toxic food environment. Still, scientists agree that it is usually very hard to change eating __________ and to get people to lose weight once they are addicted to unhealthy foods.

Such a programme was compared to surgical treatment for obesity and some researchers say that gastric bypass surgery, while solving the problem of weight loss, can __________ away food enjoyment.

That is why the researchers developed a weight-loss programme that tries to avoid that effect and rather tries to make healthier foods more __________ instead.

As they say, the key to success lies in prescribing a diet high in fibre and protein, and low in carbohydrates. Only then, according to them, can a person manage to change food __________.

After six months in the programme participants were shown pictures of different types of food, and it was the healthy, low-calorie foods which got a more intense reaction. Their brain scans also showed __________ sensitivity to the unhealthy, higher-calorie foods.

Despite the positive outcome, there is much more research to be done here, involving many more participants, long-term __________-up and investigating more areas of the brain.