Why Some Food Taste Sweet
What triggers you to eat sweets?
We all love and crave sweet stuff, whether it is ice cream, cookies, or chocolate and pastries. Some of us even eat mandatory dessert after dinner.
But Have you ever wondered why you have such a craving for sweets? or What triggers you to eat sweets?
The answer lies in our evolutionary history, and It revolves around evolution.
In Nature, food that is really sweet is very rare. But they provide a great source of energy.
Sucrose is a type of sugar or in terms a ‘carbohydrate’, such as fructose glucose, etc.
Carbohydrates or Carbs are sugar molecules that possess dread energy.
So Mammals like us (Sapiens), and our cousins, whenever they found a source of carbs, ate as much of it as they could, to fulfill their needs and craving.
We are not hunter-gatherers anymore. Neither we are running from a hungry leopard nor we are walking kilometers just to get food and water.
So what makes this food taste so sweet?
In order to be sweet, A molecule must have chemical features that have specific triangular shapes of accurate size.
Sucrose or table sugar fits in that sweetness triangle.
What about Artificial Sweeteners?
Artificial Sweeteners like Aspartame, Sucralose, and Saccharine are sugar substitutes, that are widely used in different foods to taste food sweet like sugar.
These sweeteners are in our daily beverages. But here is the tricky thing, Aspartame, the molecule is not similar to sucrose or table sugar. Chemically it is more similar to meat than it is to sugar.
Why do these sweeteners taste sweet?
The reason is, they fit into the triangle of sweetness. Only part of the molecule in Aspartame fits into the triangle.
Later, chemists discovered and created other molecules such as stevia or sucralose which are 100x sweeter than sugar.
Why do we like sweet food?
When we eat sweet food like chocolates, biscuits or cakes. Our brain rewards us by releasing neurotransmitters such as serotonin or beta-endorphins.
- Serotonin's function is to contribute to the feeling of happiness.
- Endorphins help in easing pain. Basically, it is work as a painkiller in our body.
So tell me what kind of sweet food do you crave or eat? which ultimately makes you happy.
Rabinder Kumar
March 2022