So summer is here, and for most of us that means some kind of summer holiday. Whether it is a UK based trip or an adventure further afield, millions of Brits will be planning an extravaganza in honour of the season, and this year my family and I will be among them, in our case heading to a ‘Brits Abroad’ resort somewhere around the Med. ‘Brits Abroad’ – the phrase conjures up images of streets that consist entirely of pubs called the Red Lion and the White Rose interspersed with Chinese, Indian and burger restaurants with maybe one, very well hidden, superb eatery serving beautifully prepared local produce that is largely empty. Everywhere you look, highly processed food and booze abound in vast quantities with impossibly low prices, and it seems that holiday makers from the UK simply cannot get enough of it.

Either market research or possibly years of experience has taught European holiday resorts that when on holiday your average Brit will be looking to survive on a diet of junk food and alcohol, and the higher they pile it and the cheaper they sell it then the more successful they will be in rounding all of us up into their resort rather than any of the others. I suspect that the same is true if you are trying to haul Americans in, although you may need higher service standards, and equally it is my guess that this is not the best way to attract business from many other cultures, notably the Middle East and Far East tourists. But why?

 

Well, some boffins in Aberdeen have recently suggested that they may have at least part of the answer - apparently we have the very 21st century privilege of not having to take responsibility for this one (again), it seems that it's, at least partly, in our genes. The research revolved around a protein called Galanin that has been associated with a preference for alcohol and fatty, salty food, and whether or not it has more of a part to play in the whole junk food diet thing than previously thought. And according to the research team, apparently it does. 

 

Galanin is produced in the 'reward centre' of our brains, a complex network of structures that can be influenced by a whole host of internal and external influences, from appropriate physiological hunger through to full-on heroin abuse - regardless of the initial stimulation, once the reward centre kicks into action the chemical changes in the brain are the same. Heroin does have other more addictive effects too, so don't be too worried about your penchant for chips and curry sauce degenerating into a hard drugs habit, it doesn't work that way!

It is thought that Galanin acts as a type of switch in the brain, literally turning our preference for alcohol, salt and fat on or off depending on our genetic make up, and the authors of the most recent research suggest that in cold climates such as ours the people without a genetic preference for these foods would have been less able to withstand the harsh weather conditions than those compelled to consume them in large quantities – over time, this would mean that there are far more people with the ‘give me the junk’ version of the gene and so the diet of the population as a whole changes in that general direction. Conversely, populations in warmer climates would have little to gain from eating these things so their genetic pool as a whole would not be particularly altered over time and their diet would stay the same, containing some salty/fatty foods but only in moderation.

It’s a nice theory, and if Galanin really can switch things on or off then maybe a weight loss or alcohol reducing therapy could be the next ‘big thing’ if we can work out how to have the same effect with medication. But as always, the situation is far more complex – there are so many more influences on our choice of food, ranging from other genes through to our environment at the time, psychology, childhood experiences of eating, education or lack thereof, peer pressure, advertising and beyond. When you order two pints of lager and a packet of crisps in the pub there is far more going on beneath the surface than a tweak of your DNA, so while I am potentially excited about the possibility of a new anti-craving therapy based on this a few years from now, I am also convinced that we do not need to resign ourselves to being slaves to our genes and eat and drink with helpless abandon while we wait for the next wonderdrug to save us from our plight. The authors of the original report also conclude that the ‘exercise and healthy diet’ message is still the best one for now, and there is no genetic reason why most of us should not just get on and do it.

Meanwhile I am still very much looking forward to my summer break, and have gone to some trouble to make sure that we are staying somewhere that allows us to eat something other than takeaway if we so choose, and I hope that your summer is also everything that you would want it to be. Happy holidays!