Adolescents at high risk of obesity show greater striatal response to increased sugar content in milkshakes.

Background: Children of overweight or obese parents are at a high risk of developing obesity.

Objective: This study sought to examine the underlying neural factors related to parental obesity risk and the relative impact of sugar and fat when consuming a palatable food, as well as the impact of obesity risk status on brain response to appetizing food images.

Design: With the use of functional MRI, the responses of 108 healthy-weight adolescents [mean ± SD body mass index (kg/m2): 20.9 ± 1.9; n = 53 who were at high risk by virtue of parental obesity status, n = 55 who were low risk] to food stimuli were examined. Stimuli included 4 milkshakes, which systematically varied in sugar and fat content, a calorie-free tasteless solution, and images of appetizing foods and glasses of water.

Results: High-risk compared with low-risk adolescents showed greater blood oxygen-dependent response to milkshakes (all variants collapsed) compared with the tasteless solution in the primary gustatory and oral somatosensory cortices (P-family-wise error rate < 0.05), replicating a previous report. Notably, high-risk adolescents showed greater caudate, gustatory, and oral somatosensory responses to the high-sugar milkshake than to the tasteless solution; however, no effect of risk status was observed in the high-fat milkshake condition. Responses to food images were not related to obesity risk status.

Conclusion: Collectively, the data presented here suggest that parental weight status is associated with greater striatal, gustatory, and somatosensory responses to palatable foods-in particular, high-sugar foods-in their adolescent offspring, which theoretically contributes to an increased risk of future overeating. This trial was registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01949636.