Research

Hormonal

Central administration of Neuropeptide Y (NPY) acts as a potent orexigenic signal that stimulates food intake, specifically increasing carbohydrate preference, reducing the latency to eat, and delaying satiety to augment meal size.

Neuropeptide Y (NPY) is a brain chemical that strongly drives hunger, specifically for carbohydrates. It works by making you start eating sooner, motivating you to work harder for food, and making you feel full later than usual, leading to larger meals. This is a central brain mechanism, not triggered by eating NPY from food.

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Neuropeptide Y (NPY) is one the most potent orexigenic peptides found in the brain. It stimulates food intake with a preferential effect on carbohydrate intake. It decreases latency to eat, increases motivation to eat and delays satiety by augmenting meal size.
Bernard Beck · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 2006

Why this rating

The paper is a comprehensive review of decades of consistent findings across multiple species and experimental paradigms.

Source

Neuropeptide Y in normal eating and in genetic and dietary-induced obesity

Bernard Beck · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 2006

DOI 10.1098/rstb.2006.1855

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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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