This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Karen Hopkins.

Potato Chips.

Does the mere mention of that salty snack send you searching for a vending machine?

Well, you can blame the one-two punch of fat and

carbohydrates. Because a new study finds that foods high in both carbs and fats take all the

brain's reward circuits, more so than snacks that showcase just one or the other.

The findings are served up in the journal Cell metabolism.

The energetic properties of foods play an important role in determining their value.

Dana Small, professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine.

The big players, colorically speaking, are fats and sugars.

And the reason we desire them is because they activate our neural reward system,

flooding those brain regions with the neurotransmitter dopamine.

But studies show that fats and sugars trigger those rewarding bursts of dopamine

in different ways.

This really got us thinking.

Modern processed foods like French fries, donuts, hamburgers, and even yogurt

contain high levels of fat and carbohydrate.

In contrast, foods high in fat and carbohydrate are very rare if they ever existed at all

in the natural food environment.

So we wondered if fat and

carbohydrate both released dopamine might it be the case that

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