“Sugar makes children hyper”.
We’ve all heard this before and maybe you’ve even observed it in kids.
But…
it’s actually a misconception.
There are lots of widely believed misconceptions about science that are just plain wrong – like
“You only use ten percent of your brain”.
You really use one hundred percent of your brain.
I hope that doesn’t surprise you.
Here a few misconceptions about sugar that I’ve noticed in the past few weeks.
Sugar makes children hyper
At least a dozen studies have looked at how children behave on diets containing different
levels of sugar – both natural sugars you find in fruit and added sugars you find in
chocolate or candy and lollies.
None of these studies found significant differences in behaviour between kids who had sugar and
kids that didn’t.
And in another study, parents who thought their kids had just consumed a sugary drink
rated their kids’ behaviour as more hyperactive.
Even if those drinks were really sugar free.
Often it’s kids surroundings that make them hyper – they’re excited, with friends
or at a birthday party.
And parents often attribute this behaviour to sugar.
Sugar rots your teeth
It is correct to say that sugar can cause tooth decay, but it doesn’t directly rot
your teeth.
In your mouth you have 500 to 1000 different types of bacteria, and a few species of these
are thought to cause cavities.
The main culprit is Streptococcus mutans.
S. mutans loves to feed on the carbohydrates left on your teeth as residue, from sugars
or from starch in bread or potatoes.
From this S. mutans produce high levels of lactic acid, which diffuses into the tooth
and your enamel begins to dissolve.
Of course, the more sugar you eat, the more residue you have left on your teeth.
Certain areas on your tongue sense different tastes
You may have seen this well-structured Tongue Map before, but there’s no one area for
different taste receptors on your tongue.
This myth is thought to originate from one study in 1901, but it wasn’t debunked until
1974.
Really, your taste buds are all over your tongue.
They live in your papillae, the tiny bumps that give your tongue its rough texture.
In your taste buds there’s different cells that respond to sweet, sour, salty, bitter
or umami tastes – umami being the taste of glutamate that gives meat and delicacies
like Vegemite their savory flavour.
Your taste cells have 50 to 150 receptors for each taste, when they’re stimulated
they send messages to the brain, where those specific tastes are perceived.
Now, the reason I noticed these misconceptions is because I actually believed a couple of
them.
You may have seen the episodes I did last month on sugar – I did quite a lot of research
for them and even had someone fact check my scripts.
But, still, there were a couple of little things I included that weren’t entirely
correct.
DeluxeFlame and some others pointed out “When you talked about sweetness receptors on the
tongue, you showed an image that highlighted the tip of the tongue.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t that a myth proven busted?
The whole tongue senses all tastes.”
And you’re totally right, it does.
rdizzy pointed out “Studies have shown recently that it’s not sugar at all that causes tooth
decay, it’s lactic acid produced from bacterium eating sugar that stays on the teeth for too
long.”
Yes and yes!
But keep in mind that sugar is pretty central to that loop.
What I find most concerning is that the tongue map myth was busted in 1974.
When I was in high school, which wasn’t that long ago, the tongue map was in our textbooks,
and when I was teaching the tongue map was in our teaching materials.
I never questioned it and I still believed it years later.
As Richard Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you
are the easiest person to fool."
So thank you so much for all of your comments, I really appreciate them, I definitely read
them and this show wouldn’t be what it is without you.
See you next week.