You can get too sweet on sugar

Coffee break 1

QUESTION Is refined sugar classed as a poison?

No, but according to some scientists, it should be.

one theory is that refined sugar acts as an addictive agent, causing neurobiological changes similar to those seen in drug addiction through the release of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centres.

This idea is based on the 2008 article Evidence For Sugar Addiction: Behavioral And Neurochemical Effects of Intermittent, Excessive Sugar Intake, published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

The authors noted the addictive properties of sugar in rats, which experienced a dopamine and opioid release that resembled the neurological response to drugs.

However, such symptoms have not been observed in humans. A 2016 review, Sugar Addiction: The State of The Science, in the European Journal of Nutrition, was unequivocal.

‘ We find little evidence to support sugar addiction in humans, and findings from the animal literature suggest that addiction-like behaviours, such as bingeing, occur only in the context of intermittent access to sugar. These behaviours likely arise from such access to . . . sweettasting . . . foods, not the neurochemical effects of sugar.’

Consuming excess refined sugar can have undesirable effects on our health, but it is not comparable with an addictive drug or poison.

Dr Ken Bristow, Glasgow.

QUESTION Who claimed: ‘Everything that can be invented has been invented’?

THE previous answer rightly argued that Charles H. Duell, one-time commissioner of the U.S. Patent office, was unlikely to have said this quote in 1899.

However, a previous commissioner, Henry L. Ellsworth, did say something similar in 1843: ‘The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.’ Richard Montgomerie,

Montrose, Angus.