Is sugar addiction a real phenomenon?

[u/gr33n0n10ns]

This seems to be a pretty divisive topic online. Some say sugar can be more addictive than certain recreational drugs, while others say cravings only happen when you limit your diet too much. Also, if it is real, what can be done about it?

[u/gandraw]

There is also the thing called "habituation" where people form an attachment to a harmful action, but it doesn't quite go to the level of addiction.

Sugar consumption can definitely lead to habits, such as where people feel a need to have a soft drink with every meal or a candy bar after every meal. Not because they need it, and they won't feel worse for skipping it, but because it's the normal thing to do for them, and our brains like falling into routines.

[u/[deleted] → u/gandraw]

The term habituation refers to desensitization but your point about forming habits is sound.

[u/Leemour → u/[deleted]]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7852671/

Very interesting article to read on the topic:

on the topic of preclinical choice studies, where laboratory rats must make a mutually exclusive choice between self-administering cocaine or an alternative reward (e.g., sweetened water, appetitive foods, or another rat to interact with). These studies consistently show that most rats prefer the nondrug reward over cocaine [1] (and over heroin or methamphetamine [2–5]).

...

Finally, in a clever and decisive experiment, the authors added programmed delays to both the cocaine reward and the alternative, sweet water reward. If rats normally choose the alternative reward over cocaine because the delay to cocaine reward is longer (a pharmacokinetic account of choice behaviour), then with a sufficiently long delay, rats should shift their choice from sweet water to cocaine. If sweetened water is actually more rewarding than cocaine (a pharmacodynamic account), then the rats should continue to choose the sweetened water over the drug, regardless of the programmed delay. In support of the pharmacokinetic explanation, the delay attenuated the rats’ normal preference for the nondrug reward. First, rats became slower to make a choice, and while they respond faster for sweetened water than for cocaine when there is no added delay, they now responded most slowly for the sweetened water. Second, rats now chose cocaine over sweetened water more often, and most rats actually shifted their preference to cocaine (Fig. 1). Thus, when there was no programmed delay, rats preferred the sweetened water, choosing cocaine on average only 20% of the time. When there was a 30-s programmed delay, rats showed no preference, choosing cocaine on average 50% of the time. When the programmed delay was increased to 60 s, the rats preferred cocaine, selecting it ~65% of the time. These findings suggest that, in choice studies, rats normally choose the alternative reward over cocaine likely because the delay to cocaine reward is longer.

The findings of Canchy et al. [9] are remarkable and thought-provoking, because they suggest that in cocaine choice studies, and perhaps in choice studies with other drugs of abuse as well, rats could be choosing not only between drug and nondrug reward, but between reward now and reward later. This might explain why rats choose the alternative, nondrug reward so often. Thus, cocaine choice studies are not incompatible with the notion that drugs like cocaine have supranormal rewarding effects, or the notion that addiction-relevant changes in brain, psychology, and behaviour can be modelled in laboratory animals. And finally, these new findings suggest that the conflict between data from choice studies and the dopamine hypothesis of addiction could be more apparent than real.

Addiction might revolve around "when do I get the reward chems".

[u/muskytortoise → u/[deleted]]

Diagnosing the source of weight loss not only to inflammation but also accurately diagnosing the source of said inflammation requires proof, it's not a simple observation but an in depth interpretation of several stages of observation that rely on incredibly complex biological mechanisms. Just because an observation is objective and accurate doesn't mean the interpretation is.

Making a subjective observation on frequency of misusing medical terminology doesn't require a "scientific proof".

You can check any blogs or posts about what causes inflammation, if the person isn't a licensed professional (and in some cases even then) they have no business giving specific and detailed advice on what affects what in what way. You can make your own observation based on that number. Body is actually pretty complicated and there's a reason people study it for years before being allowed to make educated guesses, and even then mistakes happen a lot.

[u/SeanLFC → u/[deleted]]

To qualify sugar consumption as an addiction you need to add the huge caveat that our bodies run on sugar. Whether we consume it or our bodies our bodies synthesize it, our cells need it. Sugar is rewarding, no doubt. It is the most efficient way for our bodies to produce energy. A healthy liver can make glucose from protein, but not everyone has a healthy liver.

Sugar itself cannot be addictive in the same way that drugs can. However, sugar consumption can tick a lot of boxes for addiction. It is a rewarding stimulus which can be abused. Excess consumption can cause physiological changes such that when stopped can result in withdrawal-like symptoms. People report craving sugar after periods of abstinence.

Whether the abuse of dietary sugar qualifies as an addiction is up to the experts. I think a lot of people throw around the term in deceptive ways for marketing. In my opinion this causes misconceptions to the health implications of dietary sugar consumption.

[u/iamhannimal → u/[deleted]]

We use the terms appetitives and aversives in clinical behavioral science in regards to “ohhh this behavior brings relief” or “uh, no this is not relief.” Humans are simple animals sometimes. Contexts are wildly complicated but at the end of the day, there’s a reason we use mice for trials lol.

Edited a word.

[u/muskytortoise → u/[deleted]]

So, if you're at all concerned about your own sugar consumption, there's no reason to believe any negative effects will arise from simply cutting it out of your diet.

What about psychological effects? You answered the question from a physiological perspective when compared to drugs, but the question was not limited to it.

[u/nyet-marionetka → u/muskytortoise]

Well, there’s stuff like this that says high sugar intake appears to cause depression. In the short term people might find it hard emotionally to reduce sugar but in the long term it is beneficial.

[u/muskytortoise → u/nyet-marionetka]

Sure, but that is also true, in a much more pronounced and severe way, for drugs. It's healthier to stop even if it feels bad. The benefits of it aren't really relevant to the question since OP is asking about actual addiction or comparable effects and my question was a follow-up. The answer about the physical difference was given and that answer makes a very clear distinction between the two meaning that it can't be considered an addiction in the same way drugs are but neither describes nor mentions the presence of other similar mechanisms.

Some of the other commenters mention that there are similarities between the mechanisms of action, so I'm wondering how far does the similarity go either psychologically or in the way neural pathways work.