Why Do We Like Sweets and Dairy Products? The Science Behind Our Food Preferences

Liking food is normal, natural; this is how our chemical senses – taste and smell – are built, to generate pleasure. Problems arise when we focus only on pleasure, ignoring real nutritional needs. Why do we like sweets and dairy products? Because our brain associates their taste with quality nutrients.

We like sweets because they help us identify quick sources of glucose, the preferred fuel of the brain and red blood cells. Sweets give the brain the same feeling of well-being and comfort experienced at the mother’s breast, because the lactose in milk is a type of sugar. Also, sweet substances stimulate the production of endogenous opioids, substances with an anesthetic and analgesic role, and sugar causes the production of serotonin, a compound secreted by both the brain and the small intestine, which makes us feel good.

All children love the sweet taste and reject the bitter taste. They perceive vegetables as bitter to a greater extent than we do, so they usually dislike bell peppers, broccoli, spinach, nettles. Being rich in micronutrients and phytochemicals, the brain identifies vegetables as foods with too few calories: too little protein, too little fat, too little sugar. However, a child’s body is growing and needs energy, proteins, essential fatty acids. There are studies that suggest that there is no such thing as too much sweet for children. The energy requirement for growth and development is something we no longer experience in adulthood.

Changes in food preferences that occur in pregnant women are largely due to the fetus. Because his organs are very sensitive to small amounts of toxins, the mother’s sensitivity to bitter increases – vomiting is a protective reflex of the fetus. Because his little body is growing and developing, he needs amino acids, essential fatty acids and energy, provided by sugars.

Sweet does not necessarily mean sugar. Actually, we don’t like sugar that much, we like sweets, cakes, ice cream. That is, we like different combinations of carbohydrates, fats and proteins, which provide the body with energy, good mood, building materials. The problem with sweets in the way and quantity that modern times make available to us is that the three categories of substances come in far too great a quantity: too much energy, too much pleasure, too much building material. Thus, excess energy is stored in the form of fat (triglycerides), excess pleasure takes us off the right and harmonious path and leads us to an area of ​​physical and mental abuse and exhaustion (for example, sex hormones are lipid), the excess of building material contributes to the growth of tumors.

Besides sweets, many people have a special affinity for cheeses. There are more than 1,700 varieties of cheese in the world, of different textures, with different flavors: from fresh cow’s cheese and curd, to cheese and cheddar, mozzarella, brie, gouda, parmesan, swiss, emmentaler, curd, feta and telemea and others. Many of these varieties are the result of the activity of several hundred species of bacteria, yeasts and molds. Part of the milk proteins are degraded by microorganisms, releasing amino acids: tryptophan, which has a slightly bitter taste and from which our body makes serotonin; alanine, which is sweet; glutamate, which is delicious and the brain’s main excitatory neurotransmitter, and others.

Under the action of digestive juices, casein – the main protein in milk – is broken into small chains, called casomorphins, which can cross the blood-brain barrier, reach the brain and attach to receptors for dopamine, a hormone associated with pleasure and reward. The more casomorphins the brain is exposed to, the more intense pleasure it experiences.

Penicillium molds also degrade milk fats, generating compounds responsible for cheese flavors. Here we are dealing with a survival mechanism: fat is the most energetic substance (9 kcal/g) and is the perfect material to make energy reserves. The difference between us today and people 100 years ago, let’s say, who didn’t have food at their disposal, is that we don’t really need reserves anymore – primarily because, having food always available, we don’t we end up using them.

Preferences for certain foods or food categories are not, in themselves, bad. Casomorphins have anticancer and antioxidant properties that we can benefit from in a proper diet. Conjugated linoleic acid in cheese is anti-inflammatory, if we keep the same principle in mind. Sweets, if they come from fruits, whole grains and legumes, are accompanied by a biochemical context that also provides fiber, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and water, all of which have countless benefits for the body.

2023-09-10 19:40:23
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