Think of warm, gooey sweets, crunchy candies, velvety pastries, and ice cream-filled waffle cones. Do you have a sweet tooth? Is your mouth watering as you read this? Why? What happens in the brain that makes it so difficult to avoid sweet foods?

Sugar can be present in a wide range of foods and beverages. Sugars include glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose, lactose, dextrose, and starch. High-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, raw sugar, and honey are all sugars as well. Sugar is used in a variety of foods, including tomato sauce, yogurt, dried fruit, flavored drinks, and granola bars.

Sugar is ubiquitous, so it is critical to understand how it impacts the brain. What occurs when sugar comes into contact with your tongue? Is it true that a small amount of sugar makes you crave more?

You take a bite of cereal. The sugars in it trigger the sweet-tasting receptors on the tongue, which are a component of the taste buds. These receptors convey a signal to the brain stem, which splits into several parts of the forebrain, including the cerebral cortex. The signal then activates the reward system in the brain. This reward system is made up of a network of electrical and chemical pathways that span numerous brain regions. It is a convoluted system, but it aids in answering a single, subconscious question: should I do that again? Overactivating this reward system, on the other hand, sets in motion a chain of negative events, including loss of control, cravings, and greater sugar tolerance.

Let us return to our cereal for a moment. It passes through your stomach and enters your intestines. Sugar receptors can also be found here. They are not taste buds, but they do convey messages to your brain that notify it when you are full or that your body needs to produce more insulin to deal with the extra sugar you have consumed.

Dopamine, a chemical or neurotransmitter, is the primary currency of our reward system. Dopamine is released when sugar is consumed.

Say you are hungry and want to eat a well-balanced lunch. When you do, dopamine levels in the reward system hotspots rise. However, if you eat the same food for several days in succession, your dopamine levels will gradually decrease, finally leveling out. That is because the brain is developed to pay special attention to new or varied tastes when it comes to food. Why?

There are two reasons for this: first, to detect spoiled food. Second, the more variety in our diet we have, the more likely we are to acquire all of the nutrients we require. To maintain that variety, we must be able to recognize new foods and, more significantly, desire to continue consuming them. That is why, when a food becomes monotonous, dopamine levels drop.

Now, let us get back to that lunch. What happens if you consume sugar-rich food instead of the healthy, balanced meal? When you seldom eat sugar or only in small amounts, the effect is similar to that of a balanced meal. However, the dopamine response does not level out if you eat too much sugar. To put it another way, eating a lot of sugar will continue to be pleasurable. Sugar takes on a drug-like quality in this way. It is one of the reasons why people tend to be addicted to sweet foods.

When you do too much, too often, things might get out of hand. So, while excessive sugar consumption can have addictive effects on the brain, a slice of cake every now and then will not harm you.