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Bariatric surgery alters food preference and hedonic response, reducing the appeal of high-calorie, high-sugar foods and increasing preference for low-fat foods, which contributes to sustained weight loss.
After surgery, your brain's reward system for food changes. You may naturally find high-sugar and high-fat foods less appealing, which helps you stick to a healthier diet. This is a biological shift, not just willpower.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Late after surgery, these animals exhibit a change in preference from a high-fat, high-sugar diet to a normal chow diet... RYGB leads to a shift in hedonic evaluation, favouring low- over high-calorie foods and restores obesity-induced alterations in ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’.
Why this rating
Based on multiple animal studies and some human data presented in the symposium.
Source
Could the mechanisms of bariatric surgery hold the key for novel therapies?: report from a Pennington Scientific Symposium
Charmaine S. Tam et al. · Obesity Reviews · 2011
DOI 10.1111/j.1467-789x.2011.00902.x
narrative_reviewCited 48×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Bariatric surgery (specifically Roux-en-Y gastric bypass) induces durable weight loss and type 2 diabetes remission through mechanisms beyond simple caloric restriction, including blunted metabolic adaptation, altered gut hormone secretion (increased GLP-1, PYY), and changes in food preference/hedonics.Good
- Bariatric surgery improves glucose homeostasis and insulin sensitivity through mechanisms involving increased gut hormone secretion (GLP-1, PYY) and altered bile acid metabolism, independent of weight loss in some models.Good
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