#Best Psychologist and De-Addiction Specialist in Indore
Ever wonder why you crave sugar at the sight of your favorite candy wrapper? Do you experience sugar cravings even when you aren’t hungry? If you’ve ever wondered why you crave sugar, the answer is easy: sugar is addictive. And sugar addiction is more common than you would think.
Sugar addiction is one of the most common types of food addiction—all the more insidious because, often, we don’t even know it is there. Many studies have shown that sugar is one of the most palatable and addictive foods and, with this knowledge, food manufacturers often use excessive amounts of it in foods we don’t even consider to be sweet.
Palatability
From a scientific point of view, palatable food not only tastes good but when we eat it, it makes us want to eat more of it. Sugar has been shown to have this effect experimentally, even with newborn babies and with animals. And it is obvious why—we require calories for survival, so we respond most readily to high-calorie foods.
Hedonic Value
The hedonic value of sugary foods is the intensity of pleasure experienced by the person eating it. The point at which sweet beverages are most pleasurable has been identified at 10 percent. This is known as the “bliss point.” Food retailers keep their foods as close to the bliss point as possible to stimulate people’s desire to re-experience the bliss point by eating that food again and again.
Why Sugar Addiction Is a Problem
Candy, and especially chocolate, is heavily marketed, particularly to children and women. This is a problem because children’s early experiences often shape their later behavior. So, if they are eating a lot of sugar when they are young, they are more likely to want sugar when they are older.
Over-consumption of sugar has been linked to many different health problems. And many children and adults become chocoholics, which also carries a risk of caffeine addiction as chocolate is a caffeine-containing food.
Health risks aren’t the only concern connected to the over-consumption of sugar. One research study has even demonstrated a correlation between childhood daily candy consumption and later violence in adulthood.