Is the sugar rush real? – Quartz

We all know the feeling that you feel after drinking a 20 ounce Coke and swallowing a pack of M & M, that stream of sugar on the body that unleashes a sudden explosion of energy. And we are all aware of the sugar crash that took place a few hours after the previous patch began to decrease.

But according to a study published online last week in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, only one of them could be real.

Researchers from German and British universities undertook a meta-badysis of 31 previous studies on the subject, involving 1,259 participants. They examined the effects of carbohydrate consumption on mood and found no evidence that could corroborate the existence of a high sugar. Decreased alertness and mild fatigue, however, were badociated with sugar intake, even shortly after ingesting.

"We hope that our findings will go a long way toward dispelling the myth of the 'sugar rush' and informing public health policies to reduce sugar consumption," wrote Elizabeth Maylor, psychology researcher and author of the journal, in a statement issued by the University of Warwick.

Since the meta-badysis is limited to healthy adults, some groups of individuals may have different sensitivities to sugar. He also examined sugar consumption in isolation, so the effect of your average energy drink, laden with sugar and caffeine, has not been determined.

The research is remarkable considering the quantity of sugar consumed in the world, in rich countries as well as in poor countries. The latest agricultural outlook (pdf) published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN) shows a per capita sugar demand of around 32 kilograms per year between 2015 and 2017 in the United States. Latin America and the Caribbean, a poorer region of the world, consume even more.

The World Health Organization recommends that people maintain their consumption of "free sugars" (added and some natural sugars, such as honey and syrup) to less than 10% of the total calories consumed per day. This might be easier said than done, because free sugars are found in many prepackaged foods, from light yogurts to ketchup sauces and pasta.

In recent decades, a big culprit in terms of free sugars are soft drinks. In the United States, their consumption increased by 135% between the 1970s and 2000s, according to figures cited in the study.

However, fewer and fewer Americans are consuming soft drinks (paywall) compared to the previous decade, in part because of the growing awareness of its health implications. In addition, if the consumption of added sugars has no positive effect on mood, it could encourage more people to pause before reaching the sweet sparkling ingredients.