Skipping dessert because you are on a diet? Contrary to popular beliefs, eating sweets may actually help you control eating and keep your weight down.
A new study by researchers from Georgia State University, Georgia Regents University and Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center found out that eating sweet foods causes the brain to form a memory of a meal, thus falling into the trap of sudden cravings may be controlled.
A London-based study concluded that forming memories of meals is essential to a healthy diet. These memories are specifically called episodic memories-which according to Marise Parent, professor in the Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State, can be used to control eating behaviour. Episodic memory is the memory people generate of autobiographical events that happened at a particular place and time. People make decisions such as 'I probably won't eat another serving. I had a big breakfast this morning.' Research found that these kinds of decisions are based on one's memory of what and when he or she ate.
The new study published online in the journal Hippocampus discovered that neurons in the dorsal hippocampus, the part of the brain that is significant for episodic memory, are triggered by consuming sweets.
The first part of the research involved rats that were made to consume a sweetened meal with either sucrose or saccharin. The researchers observed that the expression of the synaptic plasticity (process necessary for making memories) in the dorsal hippocampal neurons in the rats significantly increased.
To further prove their theory, the researchers temporarily inactivated the dorsal hippocampal neurons following a sucrose meal--the period during which the memory of a meal forms--and observed that the rats ate more of the next served meal.
This also further supports the previously published study of how disturbing the encoding of the memory of a meal in humans, such as by watching television, increases the amount of food they eat during the next meal. People with amnesia were also found to eat again if offered with food, even if they have already eaten, because they do not have memory of the meal.
