On nutrition
Do you feel like your sweet tooth is inversely proportional to the amount of sugar you consume? In other words, if you eat less sugar, you have less of a sweet tooth, but if you eat more sugar, you crave even more? If so, you’re not alone – it’s something I hear a lot.
While honoring the truth of each person’s individual experiences, I also weigh those experiences against what is known from scientific evidence. Is someone’s reality based on their perception or on tangible physiological facts? Does the science help explain their experience or does it raise more questions?
For example, a study published in 2024 in the British Journal of Nutrition looked at recent human research into whether exposure to sugary foods or drinks influences our taste for sweets (our “sweet tooth”). . It turns out that studies of adults and children have found no association between sugar consumption and later taste for sweets or have obtained results that are ambiguous to say the least.
The authors noted that other research has shown that the importance we place on sweetness varies from person to person, and that sweet “magnets” show an increased preference when given foods or sweets. drinks sweeter and sweeter – until they eventually reach a plateau. On the other hand, “anti-sweets” show an increasing aversion to increasingly sugary foods and drinks.
So when someone feels that the more sugar they eat, the more they want, what else could be going on? One possibility is a rebound from restrictive eating. Forbidden foods taste the sweetest, and that includes sugary foods. If you avoid sugar and your control cracks, you can quickly feel like having a little sugar leads to having a lot, and having a lot leads to having a lot more. It’s less about sugar per se and more about psychological resistance to restrictions and deprivation.
Sometimes emotional eating is the explanation. If you rely on food – especially sweet foods – to cope with big emotions, you might feel like your sweet tooth is out of control when in reality you need help developing other ways of coping. ‘deal. Or maybe you’re just in the habit of consuming sugary snacks, perhaps when you have an afternoon energy slump or are bored, and what once tasted special now is just “normal”, so you need to increase the dose. ante.
Now, if you think you’re objectively eating too much sugar, should you do a 180 and try abstaining? Not enough. This may partly pave the way for this dietary rebound I just talked about, but also because not all sources of sugar are equal.
Vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes (beans and lentils), milk and other dairy products all contain natural sugars in varying quantities, either in simpler forms (glucose, fructose, lactose) or in the form of complex carbohydrates that our body breaks down into glucose. Natural sugars are part of an intact and complete nutritional package including fiber, protein, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytochemicals.
Added sugars are another story. Added sugars include white sugar as well as sucrose, dextrose, maltodextrin, juice concentrate and high fructose corn syrup that food manufacturers add to processed foods. They are highly refined and add calories without nutrients. And while “healthy” alternatives like honey, maple syrup, agave syrup, molasses, coconut sugar, or rice syrup may contain trace amounts of nutrients, that’s not enough. Ultimately, all of these sweeteners are refined and essentially the same, regardless of their original source.
The problem isn’t so much a teaspoon of sugar in your morning coffee or a freshly baked cookie. It’s more about the ubiquity of added sugars in highly processed foods — even in foods that you probably wouldn’t add sugar to if you prepared them at home. For some people, sugary drinks are a large contributor to overall sugar intake and are a good place to start making changes. The low-hanging fruit, so to speak.
One reason I don’t recommend trying to eliminate added sugar is that it can lead to obsession and make it difficult to participate in social gatherings involving food. Social isolation is not good for your health. But if you want to reduce added sugar, there are gentler ways to do so. We rely less on prepared and packaged foods or choose versions with less added sugar. Another is to use naturally sweet foods with less added sugar. If you are a nice “liker”:
- Incorporate fruit into your meals and snacks. Summer fruits that become sweeter as they ripen – such as apricots, peaches, nectarines, plums and melons – are especially popular.
- Bring out the sweetness of vegetables by roasting or grilling them. Caramelized onions – onions cooked slowly over low heat to extract their natural sugars and caramelize them – are especially delicious as a topping for burgers or grilled chicken.
- Add overripe bananas or chopped dates to quick breads, muffins or pancakes. This may allow you to reduce some of the sugar in the recipe.
- Add very ripe bananas or dried fruit to oatmeal – hot or overnight oats. It can also eliminate the need for additional sweeteners. Adding cinnamon and vanilla also increases the perception of sweetness, even though these flavors themselves are not sweet.
If you tend to heavily sweeten your morning coffee or tea – or if you regularly order sugary coffee drinks – gradually decreasing the amount of added sugar or syrups can allow your taste buds to adapt so that you settled for less. Again, a gentle approach. And if you think your craving for sweets might be linked to a restrict-rebound cycle, emotional eating, or ingrained habits, focusing on that rather than sugar itself may be the best place to start .