Your brain sees sugar as a reward. But does that mean it’s addictive?

QPsychologist Ashley Gearhardt remembers a patient with type 2 diabetes who admitted that eating Krispy Kreme fried donuts was bad for her. Knowing that the donuts could make his illness worse didn’t stop him from driving to save a box of candy.

“It’s clear that compulsions happen,” said Gearhardt, a professor at the University of Michigan and one of the creators of the Yale Food Addiction Scale, a self-report tool that helps people determine whether they are at risk for food addiction. In his opinion, the inability to control emotions helps to make sugar addictive.

Add the mood-altering effects of sugar to the argument. One of the Super Bowl trademarks in Gearhardt’s mind more than any other. The 2015 ad features actor Danny Trejo, known for his rasp and various tough-guy roles, wielding an ax and complaining to popular TV parents Carol and Mike Brady in their 1970s household. After eating a Snickers bar, she transforms into the smiling and sweet Marcia, the oldest child in the blended Brady family. Advertising is a cultural expression of something that Gearhardt believes to be true: that people can depend on good things.

“We know that people don’t just eat these foods for calories but because they want to have fun. You can see that in markets all the time. Are you angry? Eat a Snickers. As a result [sugar consumption] it causes mood swings.”

Since then, the concept of sugar addiction has continued to thrive, in part due to a highly publicized 2017 article that suggested that rats prefer sugar to cocaine. But one study does not make a consensus, and scientists have different opinions about whether people (or mice) can become dependent on sugar.

What is not in doubt is that sugar affects our development and our brain. Giles Yeo, a professor of molecular neuroscience at the Medical Research Council Metabolic Diseases Center at the University of Cambridge, England, points out that the milk of mammals contains fat and lactose in infants should grow. as soon as possible and avoid becoming a victim. And we feel good when we eat sugar because our brain sees it as a reward.

But that doesn’t make it addictive, according to Margaret Westwater, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford and Yale School of Medicine. He conducted a 2016 review of scientific research on sugar and addiction. He and his co-authors found no support for the idea that consuming sugar leads to behavior and anxiety in the same way as drugs of abuse.

In a chapter in the upcoming edition of Food and Addiction: A Comprehensive Handbook, Westwater further elaborates on the fact that rats will choose sugar over cocaine because the sweet substance is more addictive than the drug. He explains that mice get an immediate dopamine response from the taste of sugar. Cocaine, on the other hand, requires more time to metabolize and increase dopamine release. It delivers a slow but powerful punch, and dopamine increases by 120%. When given cocaine or amphetamines, the brains of mice release dopamine at 300% to 900% above baseline, he said. The spikes that cause sugar pleasures are nothing compared to the hormones that appear after the use of those drugs.

That makes sugar similar to anything that “lights up parts of the brain that make us feel good,” Yeo said, and “includes drugs of abuse, which [are] addiction, alcohol, smoking, bungee jumping, sex, all – and sugar. So, there is something addictive about it. ”

He continued: “Well, I’m not trying to trick anyone with verbal gymnastics. When you talk to real psychiatrists who deal with alcohol addiction, sugar – while it covers the surface of the addictive pathways – is actually, in itself, really addictive. It is not like bamboo; it is not a drug.”

Gearhardt disagrees and thinks the definition of slavery needs to be revised.

“Sometimes I struggle with what people use for their values, how do you know when something is addictive, because it has been a controversial topic. We really thought that cocaine it wasn’t addictive in the 70s because its withdrawal syndrome didn’t look like that. [those of other] addictive drugs. What you use to create that name is very important and should not be ignored. ”

He and his team propose that “highly rewarding” and highly processed foods – many of which are high in sugar, salt and fat – should be classified as addictive substances in different testing centers. Those reference manuals, such as the International Classification of Diseases and the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), help health care providers determine a patient’s condition, and officially confirm that condition.

The Gearhardt team is ready to bring their DSM application this summer. Once they do, a steering committee of psychiatrists will review the evidence and seek public comment, if they decide there is enough evidence. The committee may decide to forward the recommendation to the organization’s decision-making bodies for final approval.

Gearhardt thinks there is a pattern of change. He said the debate about tobacco and cigarettes has been resolved based on the following elements of addiction: that the substance that causes use is compulsive and emotional, and that humans and animals will work hard to obtain it. Gearhardt’s group suggests a new point: that something causes strong desires and cravings.

If that proposal is accepted or if researchers reach the now-impossible consensus that sugar will become addictive at some point in the future, what happens next? With tobacco, cigarettes ended up being labeled as a warning, despite the fact that tobacco companies were deliberately misleading about the dangers of smoking cigarettes. The youth business of the industry was greatly reduced, which may be an option to control sugar, since as Yeo pointed out, young people may be particularly vulnerable to it.

But Emily Broad Leib, a professor at Harvard Law School and director of the university’s Center for Legal Health and Policy Innovation, believes a system-wide solution will be an uphill battle. This is true despite successful campaigns in many US cities (and several countries) to deal with sugary drinks – for example, by taxing sodas. Sugar is cheap and often added to everything from salad dressing to bread; even sugar watchers can’t keep up with where the goodies come from. Leib says food and beverage companies spend a lot of money because of the lack of safety and accountability of how they sweeten products.

“They have no limits on the decisions they make about how much sugar they should use,” Leib said, and it’s likely that big tobacco will resist any attempt to change.