Hide and sweet
Your brain is tremendously metabolically active and requires a significant amount of fuel on a daily basis.
Neurons require a lot of energy not just to cause the movement of our muscles when walking or cycling for example, but also when we undertake cognitive work.
Most of us will have experienced a scenario when we have been employed in a task that required us to focus for a prolonged period and experienced fatigue as a result.
Cramming for an exam, conducting an intense conversation or taking your favourite walk all require an increase in fuel to the nervous system.
For most of us consuming a typical diet of carbohydrate, protein and fat, the preferred fuel source of the brain is glucose which we more readily think of as sugar.
Because so many of the body’s cells, organs and tissues require glucose to function, our brains have evolved areas which are dedicated to seeking out sugar and once identified, maintaining its intake.
You will distinctly remember the fuel source and how to get it. Big food companies who specialise in heavily processed food are often one step ahead of us by taking advantage of our hard wiring and playing up to our physiology in ways that are not always appreciated and understood.
We are encouraged to consume more sweet tasting foods via two main pathways. The first is fairly obvious and relates to sweet taste detectors on our tongue and palette.
Sweet foods engage our dopamine response which is our brains’ primary reward chemical, but this can be short lived.
Think of when you consume a piece of chocolate. The initial hit of dopamine brings pleasure but as it’s being swallowed we revert to a feeling of “lacking” almost immediately.
We then have another piece of chocolate to make us feel better but the problem with our dopamine system is that the next hit will not be as significant.
Regardless, we often chase the initial feeling by consuming more and more sweet food.
We are particularly influenced by sweet sugary fluids which is no shock when we look at the huge intake of sodas in today’s society, especially by our younger population.
A second parallel pathway exists lower in the digestive tract and takes a little longer to engage.
Around 15 minutes after the intake of sweet food receptors in our gut recognise the nutrient content and send a message to our brain.
These receptors cannot taste as such so this signal relates to the fact that this food is raising blood glucose and you will be encouraged to seek more of it.
This is important when it comes to hidden sugars in foods where you wouldn’t perhaps expect to find them.
This is no accident and big food companies producing processed foods sometimes add additional sugar to their products to encourage this response.
These foods do not taste sweet as the taste is masked with the use of other ingredients, but the delayed response is often “find more and eat more of that.”
So, the next time you crave more of a sweet food it may have less to do with its actual taste and more to do with an internal drive for calorie dense fuel.
If you could benefit from more nutritional advice and strategies to short circuit these hard-wired human responses to sweet foods, why not self-refer to our Thrive programme by visiting www.lornhealthyoptions.co.uk?