The Scientific Reason Why You Can ’t Stop Eating Halloween Candy

A bowl of Halloween candy is enough to frighten any healthy eater. After just one piece, it can feel impossible to stop—until you get a stomachache. You might assume that sugar is the sole reason that Halloween candy is so hard to resist. After all, it can activate reward circuits in the brain that also light up in response to drugs like cocaine, and it is possible to build up a tolerance to and dependence on sugar. But Halloween candy’s hold on you goes beyond sugar alone. “You can just keep unwrapping and popping those little suckers,” says Rachele Pojednic, an assistant professor of nutrition at Simmons College. “But that wouldn’t happen if you walked into an office and there was a bowl of white sugar on the table.” It’s the convergence of sugar, fat and salt—the trifecta of many candies, Halloween and otherwise—that “really revs up the hedonic eating system,” Pojednic says, referring to the well-documented phenomenon of eating for pleasure rather than physical need. Studies have shown that sweet or fatty foods can activate pathways in the brain associated with pleasure and reward, kicking off processes that can compete with or override signals that regulate normal hunger and satiety, sometimes causing people to overeat out of pleasure, not hunger. And while salt, sugar and fat are all tasty on their own, food scientists—and food companies, as noted in a 2013 book aptly titled Salt Sugar Fat: Ho...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Diet/Nutrition halloween 2018 healthytime Source Type: news