After the speck and the Loacker wafers, I'm wondering what the deal with sugar actually is: is there such a thing as sugar addiction? As a diagnosis it doesn't exist in either ICD-11 or DSM-5, and a 2016 review from Cambridge found hardly any evidence in humans that sugar as a substance is addictive. The famous rats only turned into sugar bingers when they got nothing at all for twelve hours and then sugar solution plus chow for the next twelve, not with free access. What the research does take seriously is addiction to ultra-processed food, above all to the combination of fat and carbohydrates like in a Snickers: it triggers the brain's reward system more than either one alone, and on a questionnaire that applies the DSM criteria for substance dependence to food, around 14 percent of the adults studied meet the criteria. That fits what I noticed with the Loacker wafers: it was never about the sugar, it was about wanting something.
Sources
- Westwater, Fletcher, Ziauddeen (2016): Sugar addiction: the state of the science. European Journal of Nutrition — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5174153/
- Avena, Rada, Hoebel (2008): Evidence for sugar addiction: behavioral and neurochemical effects of intermittent, excessive sugar intake. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17617461/
- DiFeliceantonio et al. (2018): Supra-Additive Effects of Combining Fat and Carbohydrate on Food Reward. Cell Metabolism — https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S1550-4131(18)30325-5
- Gearhardt et al. (2023): Social, clinical, and policy implications of ultra-processed food addiction. BMJ — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10561019/