Sugar Addiction Research Paper

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Many people have a general knowledge of what is and what is not addictive. Things that are addictive can be very harmful to one’s body and cause physical and mental problems. For example, drugs, nicotine, and alcohol are some of the top substances that many people get addicted to. One of the most surprising facts to most people is that sugar is also very common to become addicted to. Many different people may be hooked to sugar, and not even know that they are. Sugar can be one of the utmost dangerous things to be addicted to, because it is in everyone’s daily diet and see it in everyday life. Having a sugar addiction can lead to catastrophic problems for oneself. Case in point, if a person consumes ridiculous amount of sugar they are more …show more content…
In one of the studies, scientists took a number of rats and separated them into two different groups. All procedures were followed exactly the same for both groups. Each group was given two substances, one was cocaine (highly addictive drug) and the other was saccharin (sugar water). Each substance was distributed in a liquid form by the rat pulling a lever. For the first 3 days, all the rats went to the cocaine at one lever. As the experiment went on the results started to show the levels of sugar water going down, meaning the rats began to drink saccharin more than the cocaine. Scientists then commenced manipulation to the study so that it would be more difficult for the rats to get the saccharin and the reward would be less than expected. Yet the rats still wanted the saccharin. “Finally, the preference for saccharin was maintained in the face of increasing reward price or cost, suggesting that rats did not only prefer saccharin over cocaine ('liking') but they were also more willing to work for it than for cocaine ('wanting')” (Intense Sweetness 5). For the rats, saccharin is a more potent “drug” and causes addiction in the same ways as cocaine. “Nevertheless, the present study clearly demonstrates in rats-an animal species that readily self-administer cocaine and that develops most of the signs of addiction following extended drug access [34]-[36]-that the reward value of cocaine is bounded and does not surpass taste sweetness-a sensory-driven reward.” This not only proves but illustrates that sugar can be more addictive than cocaine. The result is shocking because cocaine is supposed to be the most highly addictive drug there

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