Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
CALGARY — Scientists at the University of Calgary and Washington State University have determined, after a multi-year study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that cannabis makes you want a snack. The work was funded by two federal research councils and conducted across two countries. Its central finding has been independently confirmed by every other person who has ever been high.
The beef jerky will be consumed soon. (BiancoBlue/depositphotos)
The human study was run out of Washington State’s Health and Cognition Lab, which the staff abbreviates to THC, and studies, among other things, THC. Eighty-two volunteers from greater Pullman, aged 21 to 62, vaped either 20 milligrams of cannabis, 40 milligrams, or a placebo, then sat down to a spread of snacks with permission to eat as much as they liked. The stoned ones ate more. They ate more regardless of age, sex, body weight, or how recently they had eaten, which is the careful way of saying everyone went goblin mode. The surprise was what they reached for. The runaway favorite was beef jerky, with water close behind. Carrie Cuttler, the psychologist who ran the trial, says she does not understand the beef jerky, and honestly, neither do we, but it is quite tasty.
The rat study reached a similar outcome. In Calgary, Dr. Matthew Hill and first author Dr. Catherine Hume built a chamber where access to food required pulling a lever, then compared the same rats sober and stoned. A sober, well-fed rat looks at the lever and does nothing. The same rat, high, returns to the lever as though it has not eaten in days, pulling for as long as the food holds out and taking whatever comes, with no preference for any food over anything else. Apparently, the rats were not given beef jerky, or at least no one was willing to admit this on the record.
The real finding came when the team went looking for where stoned munchies live in a rat brain. THC, it turns out, hits the hypothalamus and overrides the system the body uses to manage its own appetite. The munchies are literally in your head, which is like far out, man.
The researchers, to their credit, are investigating all this to help cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy regain their appetite. That part earned the grant. The rest of the grant confirmed that a stoned rat will clear a snack tray in short order and that all of us should hide the beef jerky when our stoner friends come over. Which is also useful information, but probably not to cancer patients.
To read Bram Teitelman’s Odd Take on this story, click here.
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