Artificial Sweetners, Your Brain, and Overeating article

deedeehenderson

Interesting article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/06/this-is-your-brain-on-diet-soda-how-fake-sugar-makes-you-overeat/258521/



"One of the strongest links seen was diminishing activation of an area known as the caudate head as a recruit's diet soda consumption climbed. This area is associated with the food motivation and reward system. Green and Murphy also point out that decreased activation of this brain region has been linked with elevated risk of obesity.
[...]

"The brain normally uses a learned relationship between sweet taste and the delivery of calories to help it regulate food intake," Swithers explains. But when a sweet food unreliably delivers bonus calories, the brain "suddenly has no idea what to expect." Confused, she says, this regulator of food intake learns to ignore sweet tastes in its predictions of a food's energy content.