Dr. Charles Zuker: The Biology of Taste Perception & Sugar Craving

The brain leads to associate the taste, the likes and dislike, with the signals from the gut, which measures what you need (protein, sugar, fat) and causes craving.

The taste modalities ensure that we get enough of all macros. Sweet = carbs, umami = proteins, salt = electrolytes, bitter = avoid poisonous, sour = avoid spoiled food.

In order to don’t just stop the liking but also craving you have to find ways to module these glucose monitoring cells. One option is dishavituation by avoiding high sugar foods.

Taste system has a pre-determined identity and valence. But meaning is learned. Olfactory system is only learned and assigned meaning through experience. By association you can change the meaning.

Taste can be assessed by quality and valence.

Malnutrition is more commonly caused by overnutrition (as a result of processed food consumption) than by a lack of food in the modern world. The gut-brain axis gets dysregulated when you eat processed foods, so you keep eating more.

Our craving for sugar comes from the gut. Neurons recognize the glucose in the intestines after it has been infested and converted from sugar. They send a signal to the brain. We learn to associate foods that contain sugar even if they don’t taste like it through these circuits. We learn to associate the texture, viscosity,…

Quality of sugar: most energy for the least amount of extraction. You want to habituate yourself to food that takes more work to minimize craving.

No doubt the taste system is involved in feeding us nutrients to sustain our lives - we're attracted to the nutrients we need and we're deterred from the ones we don't. Even if your brain doesn't get stimulated by water, certain parts of your brain get the entire behavioral stimulus.

Taste only triggers liking. This is why artificial sweeteners are not able to replace sugars, they only trigger liking but not the craving in the gut. They do not signal the brain that it doesn’t need to crave anymore.