Eating meals high in fat and sodium that are designed to be highly rewarding does not lead to increases in body weight or body fat over a year in healthy young adults, even though these foods are...

What we’ve found so far suggests that eating fat- and sodium-rich hyper-palatable foods is not consistently linked to weight gain or increased body fat in healthy young adults over one year. We reviewed one assertion that directly addressed this question, and it found no increase in body weight or body fat despite the foods being labeled as hyper-palatable using the same criteria applied to other types of highly rewarding foods [1]. Our analysis shows that this single assertion contradicts the common assumption that such foods automatically lead to fat gain. The evidence we’ve reviewed leans toward the idea that, at least in this group and timeframe, these foods do not reliably cause changes in body composition. However, we only had one assertion to evaluate, and it did not include data from multiple studies or long-term tracking beyond one year. There is not enough evidence to say whether this holds true across different populations, longer periods, or under varying levels of intake. Hyper-palatable foods are those engineered to be especially rewarding to the brain, often through combinations of fat, sugar, salt, or other additives. But in this case, even when those criteria were met with fat and sodium — not sugar — no weight gain was observed. That doesn’t mean these foods are harmless or healthy, only that the link to fat gain isn’t clear from what we’ve seen so far. The practical takeaway: If you’re a healthy young adult eating these foods occasionally, there’s no strong signal from the current evidence that they’ll make you gain fat over a year. But because we’ve only looked at one assertion, we can’t say this applies to everyone or over longer periods. More research is needed.