Intense sweetness surpasses cocaine reward

Lenoir et al. (2007) Intense sweetness surpasses cocaine reward. PLoS ONE 2(8):e698.

A cool experiment showed that rats prefer saccharin-sweetened water (calorie-free) to intravenous cocaine. The authors speculate that intense sweetness being a supernormal stimulus can override homeostatic and sel-control mechanisms and lead to addiction – greater than cocaine addiction! In most mammals sweet taste perception is primarily owed to the existence of two G-protein-coupled receptors (T1R2 & T1R3) that evolved in sugar-free ancestral environments not adapted to really sweet conditions.