at greater risk for weight and body fat gainhowever some people dont have a choice in eating hyperpalatable foods fazzinos new paper builds on the research she cowrote earlier this year in frontiers in psychology intended to discover how much babies are exposed to foods deemed hyperpalatableif we think about how these foods can activate the brainreward neural circuitry in a similar manner as some drugs of abuse we want to look at the earliest point of exposure fazzino said when babies start to eat table like solid foods thats what we were interested in we wanted to know the earliest exposure point possible for these foods and the exposure rate among infants also we wanted to characterize the prevalence of these types of foods in baby foods that are available in the us food systemthe researchers found an astounding 90 per cent of 147 babies in the study were fed hyperpalatable foods mainly because theyre being fed adult foods regularly moreover 12 per cent of foods marketed as baby food were found to be hyperpalatable in the studywe found when babies are starting to eat the adult foods that is the primary vehicle for their exposure fazzino said we did characterize their overall caloric intake for infants under 12 months they consumed on average 38 per cent of their daily food calories from hyperpalatable foods and for older infants it was 52 per centbecause the prevalence of hyperpalatable foods among usproduced baby food is relatively low fazzino cautioned parents should focus their attention on the adult foods offered to babies to head off potentially harmful eating habits that could take root in babies as they ageif babies are consuming foods that are artificially highly rewarding at early in infancy this could essentially indicate to their system physiologically and to their brain that hey this is what food is supposed to taste like and this is how rewarding its supposed to be our concern is theyll get used to this level of really intense taste and intense reward at an initial point which will then make them want to consume those types of foods more as they grow up ultimately the worry is that maybe this is an early predisposing factor for obesity risk inputs from ani