Is Your Diet Drink Making You Hungrier?
A new USC study reveals that sucralose, a popular artificial sweetener, may trick the brain by triggering hunger-related activity in the hypothalamus without delivering the expected calories.
Unlike sugar, sucralose fails to activate hormones that promote fullness and alters how brain regions involved in motivation and sensory processing communicate. The effects were strongest in people with obesity and were more pronounced in women. These findings raise questions about how calorie-free sweeteners might influence long-term eating habits, and even brain development in children.
Sucralose Sparks Brain Activity Linked to Hunger: Consuming sucralose, a common calorie-free sugar substitute, activates the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that helps regulate appetite and body weight, more than regular sugar does, according to a new study from USC. The research also found that sucralose changes how the hypothalamus interacts with other brain areas, including those involved in motivation. These findings were recently published in Nature Metabolism.
Excerpted from Sci Tech Daily
