Is Sugar as Addictive as Cocaine?

In this episode, we discuss the science behind the widely accepted fact that we are all addicted to sugar. We talk about the original French study that involved rats who seemed to prefer sugar over cocaine causing an avalanche of headlines stating that sugar is more addicting than cocaine (Lenoir et al. 2007). We discussed the promising work of Dr. Anna Clara Bobadilla. We fully explore all the crap we find on the internet about this topic. 

Studies mentioned

2007 "Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward" PLoS One by Lenoir et al.
2016 “Food/Sugar addiction” published in the European Journal of Nutrition by Westwater et al.
2021 “Sugars and Sweet Taste: Addictive or Rewarding?” by Greenberg et al. 
2020 "Cocaine and sucrose rewards recruit different seeking ensembles in the nucleus accumbens core" published in Molecular Psychiatry by Bobadila et al.

Cat is drinking coffee in order to survive this week.

Kelly is drinking Oat Milk hot chocolate