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

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.

A renowned medical professional and neuroscientist called Dr. Charles Zuker says obesity isn't a metabolic disease, but rather a brain circuit disease and a physical one." By activating the gut-brain axis, which controls our preference for sugar, we're able to satisfy our sweet tooth. Due to the fact that artificial sweeteners don't get absorbed in... See more

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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,…

All organs are monitored by the brain via the vagus nerve.