If our brains are biologically equipped to manage nutrient intake, why are obesity rates soaring?
To answer this, let’s travel back to the 1960s—the true starting point of modern weight gain. This was when the Agricultural Revolution enabled mass production of grains like wheat, corn, rice, and oats. Hybridization, fertilizers, and machinery made grains cheap and abundant. Suddenly, grains were everywhere: in cereals, breads, snacks, pastas, and desserts.
Grains are extremely carbohydrate-dense. When digested, they break down into glucose. If that glucose isn’t used quickly, your body stores it as fat.
Grain-based foods have now become the majority of calories in the Western diet—often more than 50%. The USDA even recommends multiple servings daily. But this shift created a mismatch between our brain’s nutrient needs and our food sources.
Grains are convenient and filling, but they often lack a complete spectrum of nutrients. The result? We eat, but our brains detect we’re still missing nutrients—so they keep triggering hunger. This leads to overeating.
We don’t overeat because we’re addicted or lazy. We overeat because our modern diet is nutrient-poor and carbohydrate-rich.
The solution is not a pharmaceutical. It’s in understanding how your brain communicates with your body—and choosing foods that actually meet its needs.
How Your Brain Knows When to Stop Eating (and Why Modern Diets Confuse It)
Your brain doesn’t just tell you when to eat—it also knows when you’ve had enough.
Here’s how: the more you eat and satisfy your nutrient needs, the less enjoyable food becomes. That drop in taste pleasure is the brain’s signal to stop. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice it—food loses its “yum” factor bite by bite.
But here’s the catch: if the meal you’re eating is full of calories but low in nutrients—like many ultra-processed or grain-based foods—your brain never gets the message that your needs are met. So, you keep eating, not because you’re greedy or addicted, but because your body is still looking for missing nutrients.
This is why processed foods are such a problem. They’re dense in calories but poor in nutritional diversity. Your brain gets calories, but not the full signal to stop.
Think of a meal with white bread, fried food, sugary dessert. These foods hit your pleasure centers—but they lack many essential nutrients. So, you finish the meal full but still vaguely unsatisfied. Later, you snack again. The cycle repeats.
Over time, this leads to excess calorie consumption, fat storage, and weight gain.
If you start paying attention to how your food tastes from bite to bite—and stop when it stops tasting great—you’ll naturally eat less. Your brain is talking to you. You just need to learn how to listen.
John Poothullil practiced medicine as a pediatrician and allergist for more than 30 years, with 27 of those years in the state of Texas. He received his medical degree from the University of Kerala, India in 1968, after which he did two years of medical residency in Washington, DC and Phoenix, AZ and two years of fellowship, one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the other in Ontario, Canada. He began his practice in 1974 and retired in 2008. He holds certifications from the American Board of Pediatrics, The American Board of Allergy & Immunology, and the Canadian Board of Pediatrics.During his medical practice, John became interested in understanding the causes of and interconnections between hunger, satiation, and weight gain. His interest turned into a passion and a multi-decade personal study and research project that led him to read many medical journal articles, medical textbooks, and other scholarly works in biology, biochemistry, physiology, endocrinology, and cellular metabolic functions. This eventually guided Dr. Poothullil to investigate the theory of insulin resistance as it relates to diabetes. Recognizing that this theory was illogical, he spent a few years rethinking the biology behind high blood sugar and finally developed the fatty acid burn switch as the real cause of diabetes.Dr. Poothullil has written articles on hunger and satiation, weight loss, diabetes, and the senses of taste and smell. His articles have been published in medical journals such as Physiology and Behavior, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, Journal of Women’s Health, Journal of Applied Research, Nutrition, and Nutritional Neuroscience. His work has been quoted in Woman’s Day, Fitness, Red Book and Woman’s World.Dr. Poothullil resides in Portland, OR and is available for phone and live interviews.To learn more buy the books at: amazon.com/author/drjohnpoothullil
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