Ever had a craving for sweets, or a particular type of sweet.
Evidently there is a reason why we have a sweet tooth according to researchers
at Georgia State University, Georgia Regents University and Charlie Norwood VA
Medical Center. Eating sweet foods causes the brain to form a memory of a meal.
The findings, published online in the
journal Hippocampus,
show that neurons in the dorsal hippocampus, the part of the brain that is
critical for episodic memory, are activated by consuming sweets. Episodic
memory is the memory of autobiographical events experienced at a particular
time and place.
“We think that episodic memory can be used to control eating
behavior,” said Marise Parent, professor in the Neuroscience Institute at
Georgia State. “We make decisions like ‘I probably won’t eat now. I had a big
breakfast.’ We make decisions based on our memory of what and when we ate.” In
the study, a meal consisting of a sweetened solution, either sucrose or
saccharin, significantly increased the expression of the synaptic plasticity
marker called activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein (Arc) in
dorsal hippocampal neurons in rats. Synaptic plasticity is a process that is
necessary for making memories.
That possibility is supported by the
researchers’ previous work, which showed that temporarily
inactivating dorsal hippocampal neurons following a sucrose meal—the period
during which the memory of a meal forms—accelerates the onset of the next meal
and causes rats to eat more.
Forming memories of meals is important to a healthy diet. A
London-based study shows that disrupting the encoding of the memory of a meal
in humans, such as by watching television, increases the amount of food they
consume during the next meal.
Researchers have found that people with amnesia
will eat again if presented with food, even if they’ve already eaten, because
they have no memory of the meal.
Studies have found that increased
snacking is correlated positively with obesity, and obese
individuals snack more frequently than people who aren’t obese. Research also
shows that over the past three decades, children and adults are eating more snacks per day and
deriving more of their daily calories from snacks, mostly in the form of
desserts and sweetened beverages. To lose weight cut down on snacking,
but since our brain finds pleasure in sweet food, we have to work very hard at
doing this.
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