Is it true that sweets interrupt your appetite?

Parents often forbid their children to eat sweets before the main meal, since this is how the appetite can be spoiled. We decided to check the validity of such prohibitions.

Internet users often They ask, is it possible to kill the appetite sweet, on sites services questions And answers. Parents Discuss This question is on forums about children. Notes on this topic are written by specialized portals dedicated to nutrition And healthy lifestyle. On medical sites you can also find Articles About how the use of sweets and appetite is related.

Sugar - This is a variety of carbohydrates. In food, you can find different types of it - from fructose contained in fruits and vegetables, to “added” sucrose in various finished foods, including in the same sweets that are believed to be interrupted by appetite. When a person consumes sugar (or other carbohydrates), the body transforms it into energy for life. 

To figure out whether the use of sugar -containing products can affect appetite, you must first understand what it is. Do not confuse appetite with feeling hunger - the physiological need of the body for the energy that we receive with food. When our stomach is empty, the hormonal system signals the brain, which is necessary to “refer” to continue normal life. When the food enters the stomach, the hormones signal that everything is in order, and the feeling of hunger retreats. In turn, appetite -This is just a person’s psychological desire to eat something tasty, and it is not always directly related to physical necessity.

Call Loss of appetite There may be a number of factors, but all of them are somehow connected with the general physical or psychological health of a person. Among the common causes are depression, oncological diseases, HIV, and drug addiction. Also, appetite can be abyss due to strong emotional experiences and stress. However, “verified” could not find serious studies that the use of sugar-containing products can somehow affect the appetite, not in any of any authoritative medical source. Moreover, specialists of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network charity organization specializing in the fight against pancreatic cancer, Recommend Include sweet fruits between meals and add sugar to the diet to stimulate appetite. 

With a feeling of hunger, the situation is somewhat different. Sweets - for example, sweets or cakes - belong to simple (or Fast) carbohydrates, that is, products with high glycemic index. Such carbohydrates sharply increase blood sugar and give a feeling of satiety for a short time. At the same time, in response, our body begins to actively produce an insulin hormone that promotes sugar into energy. This leads to a sharp drop in blood sugar, which, in turn, Calls An even stronger feeling of hunger. So, having eaten a chocolate bar, you can feel even more hungry after some time than before.

Back in 1991, specialists at Johns Hopkins (USA) experiment: 20 young healthy men with normal weight and not sitting on a diet were fed in two different power schemes. In both cases, they were given lunch of three dishes, but at the first stage of the experiment, sweet was the last of them, and at the second meal began with a dessert. As a result, the subjects ate 6% of calories more in the case when sweets were given at the end. However, scientists considered this difference the insignificant and emphasized that the use of sweets before eating eaten does not have a significant influence on the amount of food eaten.

In 2020, a group of scientists from the University of South California spent studyin which 69 people aged 18 to 35 years took part. They consumed drinks sweetened by either sucrose (the same “added” sugar that is usually contained in sweets or soda), or glucose (type of sugar contained, for example, in honey or grapes). After that, the subjects donated blood samples. It turned out that after drinking drinks with sucrose, people stood out less than hormones responsible for the feeling of saturation, that is, such drinks did not satisfy hunger and people, despite the calories received, still continued to want to eat.

Moreover, if a person thinks about his diet, the use of the dessert can really slightly reduce the total number of calories consumed by him. To this conclusionFor example, experts of the American Psychological Association came. They conducted an experiment on their employees and students. Each one who comes to the dining room was invited to choose a dessert - a cheesecake or a plate of fruit. Moreover, some had to make such a choice before eating, while others had to. Those who chose a cheesecake in advance, ate a lighter dinner than those who chose fruits or even faced this choice after eating. As the researchers concluded, despite the fact that technically, the dessert was not eaten before eating, knowledge of it stimulated people to limit the overall calorie. But this is unlikely to apply to children who are usually frightened by interrupting appetite.

Thus, the use of sweets before meals does not affect appetite as a psychological desire to eat something tasty. The lack of appetite is usually associated with serious health problems or emotional experiences. As for the feeling of hunger, which is sometimes also called appetite, scientific studies have not confirmed that the candy or cookies eaten before dinner can interrupt it. Of course, it is worth considering that if we are not talking about one candy, but about a full-fledged (in terms of the number of calories) meal, in which the soup, hot and a side dish, was replaced by a cake, there will be no really time to want for some time, but this is applicable to any food of comparable volumes and calorie content. 

Photo on the cover: Silvia Trigo

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