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This is your brain on soft drinks
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Water is better than soft drinks. (AP/Mark Avery)
Soft drinks and other foods sweetened with high fructose corn sugar distort your brain metabolism in ways that make you want to eat too much says research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Plain sugar, on the other hand, helps the brain recognize that you have eaten enough.
Studies of how fructose interacts with the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that influences your hunger and appetite, shows that it signals the body to eat more, possibly much more. Researchers believe that those signals, which encourage overeating, may make you more prone to obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The average American now eats almost half a pound of high fructose corn syrup a day. “The per capita consumption of these sweeteners in the USA is about 145 lbs a year,” notes Daniel Lane,PhD, who has investigated its effects, “and is probably much higher in teenagers… that have a high level of consumption of soft drinks. There is a large literature now that correlates, but does not prove that a culprit in the rise of teenage obesity may be fructose."
Maybe that’s the reason why fast food joints sell so many soft drinks – they help give you the appetite to gulp down those monster burgers and fries.
Source: www.elsevier.com/locate/ybbrc
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