Sweets on the brain: Sugar-free sweeteners fool the body’s internal computer

Sweets on the brain

Sugar-free sweeteners fool the body’s internal computer
By Stephen Ornes

 

 

Many diet sodas are sweetened without sugar, but those sweeteners may fool your brain as well as your taste buds. Credit: ValentynVolkov/iStockphoto

Diet soft drinks usually have no sugar, but that doesn’t mean they’re not sweet. These beverages often contain ingredients that mimic sugar’s sweetness without the big calorie count. In a new study, psychologists from San Diego report that the sugar-free sweeteners confuse not only taste buds but also the brain.
Previous studies have found a surprising connection between gaining weight and drinking diet soda, and the new study may help explain why. The brains of people who regularly drink diet soda get mixed up keeping track of calories, say the scientists. And that deception may unconsciously encourage people to overeat.
Erin Green and Claire Murphy from San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego, worked on the new study. They gave taste tests to 12 people who rarely or never drink diet soda and 12 who drink the beverage regularly. Each volunteer consumed small amounts of water sweetened with either sugar or saccharin, a popular sugar substitute. The recruits randomly received samples of both types of liquid. While the volunteers drank, the researchers collected images of activity in the tasters’ brains.
Many differences in brain activity emerged that suggested a connection between diet soda consumption and problems with eating appropriately. One of the most important differences was in a region called the caudate head, near the brain center. Previous studies have shown that this region is less active in obese people. Similarly, the new study found that people who regularly drink diet sodas had less activity in this region when they were drinking saccharin.
Scientists have been suspecting for years that artificial sweeteners throw off the brain’s calorie counters. In 2010, another team of scientists showed that when rats were sometimes — but not always — fed foods with sugar-free sweeteners, they ate more food and got fat.
Susan Swithers of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., led that study. She told Science News, “The brain normally uses a learned relationship between sweet taste and the delivery of calories to help it regulate food intake.” But when that relationship gets thrown off, she explained, the brain “suddenly has no idea what to expect.”
Power words
obesity Extremely overweight.
psychology The scientific study of the human mind, especially as it affects behavior.

 

Posted in: