New Delhi: You put it in your tea, your coffee, in anything that you want sweetened – yes, we are talking about sugar. But it’s now time to get off your sweet dream, because that leftover New Year delight could act as a gateway drug.
In a massive study done by Princeton University, for four weeks white rats were denied food for 12 hours a day and then given concentrated sugar for the remaining 12 hours. A month later, scientists stopped the sugar supply and the rats showed full-blown signs of withdrawal – such as teeth clattering, loss of appetite, and a strong yearning for sugar.
But does this dependence lead to addiction?
Says Dr Vivek Benegal at NIMHANS, “Given high sugar content food, the brain shows a supra-normal response to it – the same way in which the brain responds to cocaine, alcohol and tobacco.”
The reason is that when high levels of sugar are consumed, the brain’s neurotransmitters release “feel good” chemicals like dopamine. This gives you an instant high and makes you crave for more sugar.
This is the same neurochemical reaction that takes place when you do hard drugs like heroine and cocaine.
“We did this study eight years ago where we looked at not the people who already had alcohol dependence but young children. We found that children who had a high risk of becoming alcoholics – because of family history and other factors – tended to prefer high sugar solutions as compared to the low risk category,” says Dr Benegal.
And that’s not all, a NIMHANS study done in 2007 called Sugar and Food Patterns found that people with a high dependence on sugar have a 40 per cent more chance of becoming addicted to alcohol and 90 per cent risk developing a gaming addiction.
But how do you get rid of your sweet tooth?
Says nutritionist Ritika Samaddar, “Even if you take something like a fruit, which has natural sweetness, that would be good. Try and have desserts which have a natural sweet flavour instead of adding sugar. That’s the only way the addiction would be much less.”
So if you have a weakness for sweet delights, be careful. You might want to say goodbye to cookies today, because it could be cocaine tomorrow.
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