Addicted Lab Rats Will Voluntarily Switch From Cocaine to Sugar
Gary Taubes · #25 Gary Taubes: Is Sugar Slowly Killing Us · Nov 30, 2017 · at 29:24
Investigative science journalist Gary Taubes discusses the addictive neurochemical properties of dietary sugar with host Shane Parrish.
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“And in animals at least, so rats and mice, we could do these experiments, you could demonstrate that they are, they will be more addicted to sugar than to cocaine or heroin, so these experiments Experiments, some of them were done in France, are sort of perversely fascinating. You basically addict your lab rats to a daily bolus of cocaine or of heroin, and then you give it a choice between either sugar or the cocaine, and if it chooses sugar, it can't go back to the cocaine, it can't go back. You know, over the course of a couple of days, the rat will switch from sugar to, from cocaine to sugar. Takes a little longer before making the switch from heroin.”
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