--- title: The Two Ways Sugar Hijacks Your Brain description: A new study in mice suggests that the desire for calories in sugar is stronger than the drive for sweetness canonical: https://time.com/4192565/sugar-artificial-sweeteners-brain/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-01-25T21:41:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:56:27.274Z article:section: Health og:title: The Two Ways Sugar Hijacks Your Brain og:description: A new study in mice suggests that the desire for calories in sugar is stronger than the drive for sweetness og:url: https://time.com/4192565/sugar-artificial-sweeteners-brain/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc21a41ef9db80c06/69877890428a9e3db7cc66ec/food-candy-snacks-pixie-sticks-3.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: TIME.com stock photos Food Snacks Pixie Sticks og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Two Ways Sugar Hijacks Your Brain twitter:description: A new study in mice suggests that the desire for calories in sugar is stronger than the drive for sweetness twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc21a41ef9db80c06/69877890428a9e3db7cc66ec/food-candy-snacks-pixie-sticks-3.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Two Ways Sugar Hijacks Your Brain > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Should I Drink Smoothies? [Watch (HLS stream): Should I Drink Smoothies?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/yaJvnmtl.m3u8) (1:40)  _Published 2015-04-01. Are fruit smoothies good for you? Here's why 3 out of 5 experts said yes._  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Jan 25, 2016 9:41 PM UTC  Elizabeth Renstrom for TIME  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Jan 25, 2016 9:41 PM UTC Ask anyone who’s ever resolved to break up with sweets and then crumbled at the sight of a cookie: it’s tough to quit eating sugar. Now, a new animal [study](http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.4224.html) suggests that the reason why goes beyond the brain’s simple craving for sweetness. Sugar activates reward areas of the brain that are associated with both sweetness and the need for calories. (Regardless of your personal relationship with calories, your body considers them a big plus and goes after them.) Now, in the new paper published in the journal _Nature Neuroscience_, researchers wanted to find out if these two rewards—sweetness and calories—travel along the same brain circuitry. To find out, they fed mice a sugar solution with calories and a zero-calorie version made with sucralose, an [artificial sweetener](http://time.com/3380013/artificial-sweeteners-obesity/). They found that in the brains of the mice, sweet taste is processed in the ventral striatum (which is part of the brain’s reward system). But nutrition—including calories—was processed in another part of the reward center: the dorsal striatum, an evolutionarily ancient part of the brain that activates motor behavior. “What we show now is that this supposedly motor part of the brain is not really completely motor, but it has a role in generating new behaviors that respond to rewards in the environment,” says senior author Ivan de Araujo, associate fellow at the Yale University-affiliated John B. Pierce Laboratory in New Haven. Surprisingly, the mice brain’s desire for calories even overrode the desire for sweetness. In fact, when the researchers laced the sugary drink with a bitter, terrible-tasting compound, the mice licked more of it than the sweet-tasting calorie-free kind. **MORE**: [Drinking Soda Can Make You Store More Unhealthy Fat](http://time.com/4175428/drinking-soda-fat-sugar/) In other words, when the part of the brain that responds to calories gets stimulated, the animals act accordingly. “We show that this area \[of the brain\] basically commands the behavior of the animal”—to keep eating, in this case, even though it tastes terrible—”and allows the animal to disregard any aversions in order to prioritize energy-seeking.” To confirm the results, they repeated the experiment, but first, they removed cells in the dorsal striatum of the mice. Absent the brain region that prioritizes calories, the mice chose the sweet-tasting sucralose drink, not the high-calorie but awful-tasting one. **MORE**: [Sugar Warning Labels Get A Boost From Science](http://time.com/4179739/sugar-warning-food-labels/) Indeed, since sugar comes with the reward of both sweetness and calories, that might be part of the reason why it’s so hard to resist—even when the option of artificial sweeteners is present. “Artificial sweeteners basically produce a weaker response in this reward system compared to sugars,” de Araujo says. That calories win over sweetness likely has implications for humans, he adds. “Humans have a modern food environment that’s being monitored by an old brain,” he says, referring to the evolutionary role of the dorsal striatum—the part that says all calories are good calories. “Nature found a reward system that seeks for sugar and accumulates sugar as much as it can; certainly this system is still functional in humans, and although we have this excess provision of sugar in the market, it’s still driving our behaviors in some way or another.” ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Should you drink smoothies? Three out of five of our experts say yes. They're one of the easiest ways to add fruit to your diet, says Joseph Price. His study found that only 4 % of kids ate a serving of fruit when they ate breakfast at school. But with smoothies on the menu, that number jumped to 45 %. Calories from fruit can add up quickly, says Laura Jeffers. So aim for a glass that's 70 % veggies and 30 % fruits. Still, smoothies just aren't that satisfying. People ate 12 % more calories when they drank their food instead of eating it, found a study by Richard Mattes. [ MUSIC ] Two of our experts think fruit smoothies in particular can do some real damage. Blender blades destroy the insoluble fiber in produce, says Robert Lustig. Which means that there's nothing keeping the sugar from being rapidly absorbed. That overwhelms the liver he says. And all that extra sugar might put us on a path to metabolic syndrome and other health problems. Vegetables have far less sugar, so green smoothies are far less of a risk he says. Even though they're insoluble fiber still takes a beating. Smoothies are so new, there's no research on there long term impacts points out Barry Popkin, but he thinks they might be the new fruit juice. Seemingly healthy, but a sugar bomb in disguise. Is contributing to diseases like diabetes. So go ahead and whip up a smoothie. 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