Getting the “munchies” after using marijuana isn’t just in your head. It’s a real biological phenomenon that could hold important, real-world implications for people suffering from conditions associated with appetite loss, according to a new study that also identified some of the most commonly desired food items while high.
Researchers at Washington State University (WSU) and the University of Calgary sought out to investigate the well-known cannabis experience, which is often comically portrayed in media as a hunger-inducing side effect that’s coupled with copious consumption of Doritos and other unhealthful snack foods.
While that might be how some people manage the munchies, the appetite stimulation associated with cannabis has the potential to meaningfully help people with serious health conditions, the researchers said in the study, which was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The human clinical trial involved 82 volunteers aged 21 to 62. Participants were randomly assigned to vape either 20 or 40 milligrams of cannabis, or a placebo for the control group, and were assessed to determine what kind of factors might impact the appetite effect. The study also involved similar assessments using a rat model.
“Cannabis acutely and robustly increases energy intake, food motivation, and reward value, irrespective of food type, satiety, food aversion, and gender/sex.”
“There are a lot of different diseases, conditions and disorders associated with wasting syndromes and lack of appetite, and this study really supports the idea that cannabis can be used medicinally to increase appetite in people who have conditions like HIV, AIDS, or who are on chemotherapy,” Carrie Cuttler, a psychology professor at WSU, said in a press release.
Interestingly, the study found that people didn’t universally gravitate toward one type of food option over another. Some participants were inclined to eat carbohydrate-heavy foods, others preferred proteins and some fell closer into the stereotype by choosing fatty snack foods. But there were some common, if unexpected, themes.
“Beef jerky was one of the No. 1 things intoxicated people gravitated toward, which I don’t understand. Honestly, I would have thought chocolate, chips, Rice Krispies treats—things like that,” Cuttler said, adding that water was among the most desired items.
Ryan McLaughlin, a WSU veterinary science professor, said that the “human study found irrespective of body mass index, time of last food consumption, sex or how much cannabis was consumed, human participants who used cannabis during the trial ate significantly more food,.”
The rat-based trial similarly demonstrated that cannabis commonly triggered an appetite response in the animals, which pulled levers to obtain food at a much higher rate compared to the control group.
“The sober animals are kind of like, ‘I’m full. Why do I care?’ They don’t put in any effort at all. They barely work in any capacity to get access to food,” The University of Calgary’s Matthew Hill said. “But you get them stoned again, and even though they’re now full and they’ve eaten, they go right back as if they’re starving.”
“The same thing we saw in the humans we saw in the rats. We kind of thought it would make them want to eat carb-rich foods, but that didn’t seem to be the case. It just seemed to be any food,” he said.
The findings reinforce what’s been established in earlier research into the endocannabinoid system. THC stimulates the hypothalamus and “hijacks that entire system,” McLaughlin said. “So even though you’re not necessarily hungry, THC can stimulate cannabinoid receptors in the brain and make you feel hungry.”
“That’s what really gives us the opportunity to look at whether this is something brain-mediated or gut-mediated, and this generally shows ‘the munchies’ are mediated by the brain,” he said.
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This is far from the only study to look at the relationship between marijuana and appetite.
For example, in 2024, WSU researchers separately published a federally funded study that identified exactly what happens in the brain after using marijuana that causes the munchies. The research, published in Scientific Reports, revealed how cannabis activates a specific cluster of neurons in the hypothalamus region of the brain that stimulates appetite.
A 2019 study separately found that sales of commonly munched on products like ice cream, cookies and chips tend to go up after states legalize cannabis.
Despite that, a 2022 study determined that adult-use legalization is actually associated with decreased levels of obesity despite the fact that cannabis is well-known appetite stimulator.
In 2024, meanwhile, a meta-analysis also found that people who use marijuana are about half as likely to develop type 2 diabetes.
