-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email We’ve all said it, even if we regret it: “There’s always room for dessert.” Turns out, there is a scientific explanation for why we can consume so many sweets compared to other types of foods with a similar number of calories. For sweets, the threshold for satiety, which is triggered by the human appetite center in the ventromedial hypothalamus, is higher than any other flavor stimulants — meaning we can eat many more sugary foods than salty or savory ones.
Essentially, sugar is a vehicle that makes you able to eat more. And because sugars are added in everything from salad dressings to pasta sauce to bread and other processed foods, people tend to eat more of many things than they normally would — without that sugar throwing their satiety center out of whack, said Dr. D.
L. Katz, the founding director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center. “Having the sugar there is a pretty reliable way of getting people to eat more of it than they otherwise would, to run out sooner, and to go back to the store and buy more — and if you're selling the stuff, that's a great formula,” Katz told Salon in a phone interview.
“The result is that sugar is in everything.” Related What is sugar and what would happen if I stopped eating it? A scientist explains We like sugar so much that we often call foods steeped in it "addictive" or "like crack," despite this comparison having little to do with substance use disorders . Or i.
