Many people think that sugar is kicking, stimulating, and addictive in the long run. However, many scientists believe that completely different mechanisms are behind this phenomenon.
- There is a belief that eating sweets improves your mood, and sugar can be addictive
- However, some scientists believe that sugar does not “kick” at all.
- Sugar is simply a source of energy, and the need to consume it has an evolutionary basis
- It is not sugar itself that can make us addicted, but the pleasure we get from good food
- More current information can be found on the Onet homepage.
The author: Pia Heinemann, welt.de
Fear of sugar
Parents today are united by one great fear: of sugar. Not because sweets cause tooth decay. Dental care is now widely available and at a high level. Parents are concerned about the sugar high. A handful of sweets or a bar of chocolate is enough for the children to get excited, giggle, run like crazy, get out of control.
There is a concern that this may be the beginning of a process that parents know all too well. Because if fatigue occurs in everyday life, they eat a piece of cake. Then the day may go on. A large proportion of adults are convinced that they cannot do without sugar anymore. Chocolate and cakes already have them in their paws. And where there’s a high, addiction sets in quickly. The myth of sugar addiction has become so strong that parents from an early age follow a diet without sweets.
Sugar is one of the most studied substances in the world. Its many disadvantages are known. Sweets cause tooth decay and contribute to obesity, diabetes and other diseases. But this knowledge is coupled with the belief that sugar makes you happy. So happy you hardly want to get rid of it. The high is so high that many consider themselves addicted.
However, scientists point out that there must be something else behind the alleged addiction to cupcakes, chocolate, and lemonade. Because, they claim, there is no such thing as sugar addiction.
Kostas Mantantzis is one such researcher. For many years, he says himself, he was convinced that well-being could be triggered by the effects of sugar. But then this scientist at Humboldt University and his team backed away from that theory after doing some research. A study in which participants had to drink sugar-containing liquids, such as sugar substitutes, as well as unsweetened drinks. Then, it was checked who was more awake, in a better mood, or more active. The results clearly showed that sugar had no positive effect on mood.
“People all over the world consume sweet drinks and sweet snacks to quickly improve their mood, become more alert, or fight fatigue,” says Mantzis.
But sugar doesn’t have to wake up demons. Sweets don’t have to kick in. So the addiction theory is open to question.
It’s hard to break free from the sugar dispenser
For a long time, this theory seemed to have solid scientific foundations. As if it has definitely been proven that sugar is addictive. For example, at Princeton University, the late Professor Bart Hoebel trained rats for decades to get sugar pellets when you press a lever. As a result, some rats pressed the lever almost non-stop. The reward system was activated in the rodent’s brain.
When the animals ate sugar, dopamine was released, and exactly the areas of the brain that induced satisfaction and well-being were activated. This is exactly what happens in the human brain. If we eat sugar, we feel good. The body forces us to eat carbohydrates.
Last year, scientists presented another clue that sugar can be addictive. They allowed cocaine-addicted rats to choose between the drug and sugar. The rats chose sugar.
Some time later, Hisham Ziauddeen began to discuss the issue. He is a psychiatrist from the University of Cambridge, he also conducted a survey and concluded that there could be no question of addiction. In the experiment, the rats always acted as addicted if they only received carbohydrates for two hours a day. But this situation is completely artificial, the scientist says. The psychiatrist points out that rats can actually satisfy their cravings for carbohydrates at almost any time. And that’s exactly what they do: they don’t eat more than they need. If there was enough food, they never acted like drug addicts in rehab.
The experiment with rats and cocaine did not convince him either. He has not shown at all that sugar is a more addictive substance than an intoxicant, only how much the body craves sugar.
Susanne Klaus also wants to debunk the myth of sugar addiction. He is a professor at the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Potsdam-Rehbrücke and heads the Department of Metabolism Physiology. “Sugar is not a drug,” he says. In her opinion, the more and more common explanation of the global obesity epidemic by sugar addiction is unfounded.
The metabolism expert explains that the body naturally has a very strong thirst for sugar because it is a very important source of energy. The craving for sugar is therefore deeply ingrained in evolution. This is by no means evidence of a sugar addiction.
“It’s all a question of definition, of course,” explains metabolism expert Susanne Klaus. – Generally, we talk about addiction when the substance we want to consume in increasingly larger doses is artificial – that is, one that our body does not naturally desire. Sugar is not the same as heroin, opium or alcohol. Without them, the body can handle it without problems. But not without sugar anymore – he says.
If food is not addictive, why do so many people believe and declare that they cannot stop eating chocolate or crisps? Why is the number of those who simply cannot resist increasing? And why do doctors warn against obesity as if it would be a contagious epidemic?
Perhaps – as opponents of the addiction theory believe – it is not about sugar itself, because hardly anyone wants sugar in lumps, but about chocolate or cake, i.e. a mixture of fat and sugar. So maybe this is more of a general food addiction than a specific sugar high.
The brain likes tasty food
“But there is also no scientific evidence of food addiction,” says Falk Kiefer. At the Central Institute of Mental Health, Kiefer studies addiction and what happens in the brain when dopamine is released in the reward system, just as it does after consuming sugar.
However, this neurotransmitter has no direct, addictive effect on the reward system. It just lets you know when something is right, Kiefer explains. “You have to think of it as likes on Facebook,” he says. Such likes would be awarded not only to sweet foods, but also to places where you ate a good meal. – It helps us. When we are hungry, we go through the world as if we had tunnel vision. We see restaurants or bakeries earlier than when we are full – he explains. Useful mechanism, as long as it doesn’t get out of control, of course.
But if this mechanism doesn’t work, then we head towards the cake shelves even when we’re not hungry. “Sometimes the feedback mechanisms that tell us we’re saturated get out of control,” Kiefer explains. The disturbance of the “appetite system” explains why every German consumes an average of 34 kg of sugar per year. It also explains some overweight people.
But why is the system getting out of control at all? Because food is much more than just food. It’s an emotional act. Sweets help fight stress and frustration. So sugar and sweets alone aren’t the problem, but how you deal with them. Chocolate as a reward is then linked to well-being and its recognition in the brain. When people are depressed, they try to evoke these positive feelings with sweets. The satiety state is then ignored, the mind does not care if the stomach is full.
Seven years ago, Italian scientists explained why the saturation feedback does not work for some people. This is because people like to eat. The result is what Palmiero Monteleone and his team at the University of Naples have called “hedonistic hunger”. It is not used to soothe a rumbling in your belly, but only to satisfy your desire.
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Scientists were able to show that blood levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin increased when the subjects ate their favorite food. Even when subjects were only thinking about their favorite food, ghrelin levels increased. Because of cassata, panna cotta or zabaglione, the brain took over the stomach. So maybe we are not addicted to sugar, but pleasure.
This article was first published in April 2019.