Very interesting article on ABCNews.com:

What we crave
Originally uploaded by The Put-Man

Want another reason why you shouldn't spend too much time at the trough? Because consistently eating too much food over a period of just a few weeks can screw up your brain, taking away your ability to control your appetite.

"Two or three months of overnutrition, a diet high in fat and sugar," can wake up a normally dormant...

"Two or three months of overnutrition, a diet high in fat and sugar," can wake up a normally dormant "pathway" in the brain, which can take away a person's ability to control his or her appetite, says Dongsheng Cai, assistant professor of physiology of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The new study is published in the current issue of the journal Cell.

That's the basic finding in a new study out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison that could help explain why once you've put on those extra pounds, it's really hard to take them off. The study is published in the current issue of the journal Cell.

"We've discovered why the appetite doesn't shut down," said Dongsheng Cai, assistant professor of physiology at UW-Madison, in a telephone interview, even after a person has consumed enough food to maintain the correct balance between calorie intake and energy expended.

Read more:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=5978686&page=1