Strategic Studies of Diets for Health Based on Dietary Preference and Energy Expenditure

(2009 JSNFS Award for Excellence in Research)

Abstract

Maintenance of a good balance between energy intake and consumption is difficult, because eating is a pleasure for people whereas exercise is hard. For the realization of good balance of energy, I have accumulated some data based on the following studies. (1) High-calorie oil is an attractive nutrient for humans and animals. Although pure oil has no taste or flavor, it is known from experience that good food taste depends on oil. However, it is not clear why oil produces good taste. A CPP test, performed in rodents, clearly indicated that dietary oil exerts rewarding effects through the opioidergic and dopaminergic systems. (2) We demonstrated that the central nervous system possibly coordinates. Physiologic activities such as exercise, energy metabolism, and fatigue. Inoue and I showed that TGF-β, which is induced in the brain by exercise, promotes fat mobilization, suggesting that brain cytokines influence various physiological phenomena related to energy metabolism during exercise. (3) Activation of the autonomic nervous system increased energy expenditure significantly. Capsiate is a non-pungent capsaicin analog, and a principle of the non-pungent red pepper cultivar CH-19 Sweet recently identified by Yazawa. The acyl residue of capsiate is identical to that of capsaicin, although its aromatic portion is not vanillylamine, as it is in capsaicinoids, but rather vanillyl alcohol. We found that, like capsaicin, capsiate promotes consumption of energy via TRPV1.