Nutritionists have debated for a while whether there's such a thing as "sugar addiction". (I have a name for this kind of debate- I call it "ridiculous". I put it in the same class as the "debate" among conventional doctors over whether there's such a disease as chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia. How clueless are these people?)
So, yes, I've long since made up my mind that sugar addiction "exists", and so have plenty of people who have experienced it themselves. But it's always nice when science backs up our own intuitions. A recent study by graduate student Maglie Lenoir and her colleagues at the Unvierstiy of Bordeaux in France showed that rats given a choice between highly sweetened water and intravenous cocaine overwhelmingly picked- you guessed it- the sugar water!
And their preference was just as intense regardless of whether the liquid was sweetened with saccahrin or sugar (diet soda drinkers note well).
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