Sugar's Calories Tempt the Brain

Lab Tests Show That It's Not Just The Sweetness That Pleases

(WebMD)  The sweet taste of sugar may be hard to resist, but sugar's calories may have their own allure.

That news comes from lab tests on mice, including "sweet-blind" mice that can't sense sweetness.

The researchers studied sweet-blind mice and normal mice that didn't eat or drank anything for 20-22 hours.

The mice had access to two bottles of water. One bottle contained plain, unsweetened water. The other bottle contained water sweetened with sugar.

All of the mice preferred the sugary water. And after drinking the sugary water, brain levels of the pleasure chemical dopamine rose in the mice.

Next, the mice got a choice between plain water and water sweetened with sucralose, a no-calorie sweetener. The normal mice preferred the sweet water, but the sweet-blind mice had no preference.

And although dopamine levels rose when the sweet-blind mice drank water spiked with sugar, that didn't happen when they drank sucralose-sweetened water or unsweetened water.

Sugar's appeal may lie in its calories, as well as its taste, conclude Ivan de Araujo, PhD and colleagues; de Araujo, who worked on the study at Duke University, now works at Yale University's John B. Pierce Laboratory.

The study is "important and interesting," write Yale University's Zane Andrews, PhD, and Tamas Horvath, DVM, PhD, in an editorial published with the study in tomorrow's edition of Neuron.

Andrews and Horvath point out that since the mice were hungry and thirsty, they may have responded differently than under normal conditions.

The editorialists call for more research on the topic, since other studies have shown "cross talk" in the brain about food's pleasurable taste) and practical (calories) aspects.

[prairiefox1]

- Eventually, Americans will be too fat to leave their houses. The rest of the world eagerly awaits that day.

The rest of the world is fat too, and getting fatter.


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Posted by helloall34
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THERE IS FAT AND OBESE! FAT PEOPLE WILL BE ABLE TO COME AND GO WHILE THE OBESE WILL TRAP THEMSELVES! THE DIVIDER FROM FAT TO OBESE IS THE BODY MASS GREATER THAN 30!

[lochlan-2009]

"Sugar''s appeal may lie in its calories, as well as its taste"

doesn''t the brain run on glucose (sugar)?

[estabwary]

HONEY is the best.

http://www.whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=96

People were sold on sugar because honey is messy.
Processed sugar has had the goodness stripped out of it.

Use your locally made honey & support the growers
& fight to keep the bees alive.

[helloall34]

- Eventually, Americans will be too fat to leave their houses. The rest of the world eagerly awaits that day.

The rest of the world is fat too, and getting fatter.

[estabwary]

Why wouldn''t sugar be more appealing than distgusting chemical substitute? Hmmm, sugar or poison?...let me think. It''s laziness, vanity & TV watching in humans that would rationalize that chemicals are normal to eat.
Only impaired mice are dumber than people.

[iknowbest-2009]

Where''s all the earnest comment on this topic? I''m guessing all the CBS news posters are too invested in racist venting to address America''s biggest problem - it''s grotesque obesity? You do understand that the rest of the world knows all they have to do is wait?

[iknowbest-2009]

You know the economy under the RepubliKKKans is falling apart, but when it comes to the science of obesity, America leads the world! Eventually, Americans will be too fat to leave their houses. The rest of the world eagerly awaits that day.