• Question: why is sugar adictive?

    Asked by baller to Andrew, Dilip, Emma, John, Ruth on 13 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Andrew Quigley

      Andrew Quigley answered on 13 Nov 2015:

      I didn’t know the answer to this but I’ve done some reading and as far as I can tell, sugar activates the pleasure centers in your brain. The pleasure centers are activated by a chemical called dopamine. So when you eat sugar, it causes dopamine to be released, and this activates the pleasure centers of your brain.

      Put simply: at the start your addiction, it only took one teaspoon of sugar to activate your pleasure centers. But as you get used it, you find yourself eating 5 teaspoons to get the same activation of pleasure centers.

      So sugar is addictive because your brain associates eating sugar with feeling “happy”. As with everything, it’s the amount you eat that does the harm. You have to keep eating more and more sugar to get the same amount of dopamine released, and that’s where the problem is!

    • Photo: John Gleeson

      John Gleeson answered on 15 Nov 2015:

      Yep Andrew covered this pretty well. So it’s not addictive in the sense that drugs like opium are, but it’s to do with your body needing more sugar to get the same sensation. It’s similar with salt, the more salt you eat, the more you need to taste the saltiness.

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