Curse you, gas station sushi! Never again! *Blarf*
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Food avoidance is actually a learned behavior. And we’re not the only ones who do it.
Yujie Wang and team from University of Bonn, studied this in fruit flies. They fed them food contaminated with harmful bacteria.
SOME flies learned to avoid the bad food. Which flies? FAT flies!
This learned avoidance depends on communication between the brain and fat tissue. In starving animals there’s less fat, reducing these communication signals. They keep eating contaminated food.
Understanding this brain and fat connection may help to further understand eating behavior.
So maybe avoiding questionable sushi isn’t an overreaction… just ask your fat!
Reference: Wang, Y., De Backer, J., Muria, A., Selcho, M., Tanimoto, H., & Grunwald Kadow, I. C. (2026). A bidirectional brain–fat body axis for pathogen avoidance. Neuron.