An end to torture?

Well, here we are in the first 24 hours of Barack Obama’s presidency, and what story do we have to present to you? More torture, but this time of American citizens.

In a study to learn how the brain reacts to dieting and food cravings, scientists ordered 23 male and female volunteers, who weren’t even obese, to fast for 17 hours! If you think the food deprivation is the worst part, then put on your outrage galoshes:

“During that period, he and his team interviewed them about their favorite foods and asked them to rank each on a 1-to-10 scale. The researchers then selected one food for each subject, the only requirement being that it scored 7 or above in desirability. When the 17 hours were up, the volunteers were injected with a nuclear tracer, placed in a brain-imaging PET scanner and presented with a food they craved.”

Oh, they’re not done yet:

“‘If you said you liked barbecued ribs, we’d put a big portion of them in front of you,’ says [Dr. Gene-Jack] Wang. ‘We’d warm them in a microwave first so you couldn’t get away from the smell, and we’d give you a cotton ball with a bit of the food on it so you could taste it. Then we’d have one of the nurses describe how the food was made.'”

And did the patients then receive the food? No, they were told to think of something else and were required to keep their eyes open.

So, what did they learn in the name of science? That people have a hard time sticking to diets when tortured with juicy, succulent ribs. Way to let us down, President Obama.