Sweet Sabotage

Imagine warm, gooey cookies, crunchy candies, velvety cake, and waffle cones filled with ice cream.

Do you drool?

Do you have dessert?

Why?

What happens in the brain that makes it difficult to resist sweet foods?

Sugar is a general term used to describe a class of molecules called carbohydrates, which are found in a variety of foods and drinks.

Check the labels of the sweets you buy.

Glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose, lactose, dextrose, and starch are all forms of sugar.

Also includes High Fructose Corn Syrup, Fruit Juice, Raw Sugar, and Honey.

Sugar is not only found in sweets and desserts but is also added to tomato sauce, yogurt, dried fruit, flavored waters, and muesli bars.

Sugar is everywhere, so it's important to understand how sugar affects the brain.

What happens when sugar gets on your tongue?

And does eating a little sugar make you want more?

You bite into your cereal. The sugar it contains activates sweet taste receptors, which are part of the taste buds on your tongue.

These receptors send signals to the brainstem, from which signals branch to many regions of the forebrain, one of which is the cerebral cortex.

Different sections of the cerebral cortex process different tastes: bitter, salty, umami, and in our case sweet.

From here, the signal activates the brain's reward system.

This reward system consists of a series of electrical and chemical pathways that span different regions of the brain.

This is a complex network, but it helps answer one subconscious question: Should I do this again?

What is that warm, fluffy feeling you get when you eat your grandma's chocolate cake?

This is what your reward system says: "Hmm, yeah!

" And it's not just activated by food.

Socialization, sexual behavior, and drugs are just a few examples of things and experiences that activate the reward system.

However, when this reward system becomes overactive, it triggers a series of unfortunate events.

Loss of control, cravings, increased tolerance to sugar.

Let's get back to talking about serials.

It travels to the stomach and eventually reaches the intestines.

So what happens?

We also have sugar receptors here.

They're not taste buds, but they do send signals to your brain that you're full or that your body needs to produce more insulin to cope with the extra sugar you're ingesting.

The main currency of our reward system is dopamine, an important chemical or neurotransmitter.

There are many dopamine receptors in the forebrain, but they are not evenly distributed.

Certain areas contain dense clusters of receptors, and these dopamine hotspots are part of our reward system.

Drugs such as alcohol, nicotine, and heroin cause dopamine to go into overdrive, making some people constantly striving, or in other words, becoming addicted.

Sugar also causes the release of dopamine, but not as intensely as drugs.

Sugar is rare among dopamine-inducing foods.

For example, broccoli has no effect.

This probably explains why it is so difficult to get children to eat vegetables.

Speaking of healthy eating: Assume you're hungry and decide to eat a balanced meal.

Doing that increases dopamine levels in reward hotspots.

However, if you eat the same food for many days in a row, your dopamine levels will increase less and less and eventually plateau.

This is because the brain has evolved to pay special attention to new and different flavors when eating.

Why?

There are two reasons.

First, to detect rotten food.

And secondly, the more diverse our diets are, the more likely we are to get all the nutrients we need.

To keep that variety up,

we need to be able to recognize a new food,

and more importantly, we need to want to keep eating new foods.

And that's why the dopamine levels off when food becomes boring.

Now, back to that meal.

What happens if in place of a healthy, balanced dish,

Do you eat sugar-rich food instead?

If you rarely eat sugar or don't eat much at a time,

the effect is similar to that of a balanced meal.

But if you eat too much, the dopamine response does not level out.

In other words, eating lots of sugar will continue to feel rewarding.

In this way, sugar behaves a little bit like a drug.

It's one reason people seem to be hooked on sugary foods.

So, think back to all those different kinds of sugar. Each one is unique, but every time any sugar is consumed, it kickstarts a domino effect in the brain that sparks a rewarding feeling.

Too much, too often, and things can go into overdrive. So, yes, overconsumption of sugar can have addictive effects on the brain, but a wedge of cake once in a while won't hurt you.