Blog Post 5: Connecting the Dots

Now that we finished making three different batches of brownies: one salty, one sweet, and one highly processed from a box mix, I decided to go back to my original research and also read more articles to gain a better understanding of our observations. My first blog post summarized a scientific journal about food addictions, explaining why sugar in particular appeals to human taste buds and may become extremely addicting. Keeping in mind my research about how sugars and fats affect our brains, I then made a batch of peanut butter brownies in my second blog post. Looking back, I suddenly realized that I never did any specific research about how salt would affect the brain. My brownie batches with extra sugar/fat and processed from a box mix both made sense because of the journal “Physical Craving and Food Addiction,” which explained how the brain treated sugary and fatty foods mimicked a dopamine and even addictive effect on the brain. Yet at the conclusion of my brownie baking project, one question still remains: Why does salt matter?

Rather than looking at a single scientific journal entry, I decided to research the importance of salt by looking at multiple articles to hear from a different perspective. My first article came from a scientific blog, titled Science Fare. According to Kevin Liu, we evolved to enjoy the taste of salt as a survival instinct because our bodies require us to maintain a specific salt balance in order to keep healthy. Additionally, salt has the ability to suppress bitter tastes. Sugar acts in a similar way in that it allows bitter foods to taste tolerable.

To hear from a completely different perspective, I also looked at a cooking website for a chef’s explanation about the effects of salt on our brain. In Culinate, Helen Rennie’s blog post “Grain Of Salt -- Sodium makes food taste better” explains how salt is crucial in making food taste good. Depending on the type of food, whether it is a meat, vegetable, or etc. salt must be added either before or after preparing the dish in order to enhance flavouring.

For my next source, I found a government book from the National Library of Medicine, titled “Taste and Flavor Roles of Sodium in Foods.” This article focused more on the physical effects of salt on humans rather than the evolutionary reasonings behind the effects. On a chemical level, sodium chloride gives a purely salty flavour that increases with concentration. One aspect of salt that humans particularly enjoy is the the salt flavour has a sudden spike, or peak, before falling. Like the previous article mentioned, salt suppresses bitterness. As a result, this may also enhance some flavours, such as sugary tastes. I found this fact interesting and unexpected because normally people would imagine sugar and salt as opposite tastes. Perhaps this explains why the brownie batch made from the box mixture turned out so successful. Too much salt, such as the first batch with lots of peanut butter, tasted overwhelmingly savoury to those who preferred sweets. On the other hand, too much sugar and fat, like the second batch of brownies, tasted overwhelmingly sweet for those who needed some salt to compensate the flavour. The brownie box mixture had a combination of salt and sugar, which appealed to both because the salt actually enhanced the sweet taste in the brownies.

Remembering my initial research about how sugar appears as addictive as drugs in that it creates a dopamine effect in the brain, one article about salt that caught my eye. The Science Daily featured the article, “Salt appetite is linked to drug addiction, research finds.” According the Duke University Medical Center, having an immediate sense of gratification after intaking salt makes sense from an evolutionary perspective because this would help animals quickly get away from predators. Yet this survival behavior that causes the brain to produce dopamine and receive instant gratitude after consuming salt may become addicting. As these dopamine pathways cause drug, and even sugar, addictions and cravings, salt may also fall into this category of dangerously addictive chemicals. After reading this article, I found it interesting how similar it sounded to the explanations about how sugar affects the brain.

Daily Mail, a health website in the United Kingdom, elaborated more about Duke University’s study in the article “Why salt is addictive: It stimulates the brain cells just like cigarettes and hard drugs do.” In the study, three groups of mice were fed normal, low, and high sodium diets. When comparing the mice brains, they noticed the brains made proteins linked to heroin, cocaine, and nicotine. Interestingly, the spike generated by salt is also extremely short lived, lasting less than the amount of time it takes for the salt to pass through the gut. As a result, salt cravings appear similar on a neurological level to opiate addictions.

Overall, it seems that salt has equal effects on the brain as sugar and fat. Therefore it makes sense that junk food and fast foods become so addicting, which would also contribute to America’s obesity problems. Furthermore, if sugar, fat, and salt itself release spikes of dopamine, homemade junk food is no better than highly processed factory-made junk food in terms of addiction..

Works Cited

Fiona Macrae for the Daily Mail. "Why Salt Is Addictive: It Stimulates the Brain Cells Just like Cigarettes and Hard Drugs." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2015. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2013703/Why-salt-addictive-It-stimulates-brain-cells-just-like-cigarettes-hard-drugs.html>.

Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake; Henney JE, Taylor CL, Boon CS, editors. Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake in the United States. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2010. 3, Taste and Flavor Roles of Sodium in Foods: A Unique Challenge to Reducing Sodium Intake. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK50958/

Liu, Kevin. "Why Does Salt Make (almost) Everything Taste Better?" Science Fare. N.p., 10 July 2013. Web. 08 Mar. 2015. <http://sciencefare.org/2013/07/10/why-does-salt-make-almost-everything-taste-better/>.

Rennie, Helen. "Grain of Salt -- Sodium Makes Food Taste Better." Grain of Salt — Sodium Makes Food Taste Better. N.p., 1 June 2007. Web. 09 Mar. 2015. <http://www.culinate.com/columns/front_burner/salt_seasoning>.

"Salt Appetite Is Linked to Drug Addiction, Research Finds." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2015. <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110711151451.htm>.

Blog Post 4: Taking Shortcuts

So far, I have baked peanut butter brownies and extremely sugary/buttery brownies from scratch. My original peanut butter brownie batch appealed primarily to myself and my friends, who prefered salty foods. On the other hand, my sweet-toothed floormates preferred my second batch of brownies, in which I simply removed the peanut butter from the original recipe and significantly increased the sugar and butter.

For my third brownie trial, I wondered which category of taste a standard, pre made brownie mix at Safeway would fall into: sweet or savoury? Scanning the various types of brownie mixes on the shelf, I finally settled on the Double Chocolate Ghirardelli Brownie Mix. I avoided any organic brownie mixes and simply based my selection on the product’s advertisement pictures in order to find a highly processed brownie mix for comparison with my brownies from scratch. Examining brownie mix, decorated with the gold Ghirardelli chocolate bar design at the top and a delicious, freshly baked brownie square beneath the logo.

I pulled the mix off the shelf, flipped the box, and read the ingredients: Sugar, enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), chocolate chips (sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, soy lecithin [emulsifier], vanilla), canola or soybean oil, natural cocoa, cocoa (processed with alkali), wheat starch, salt, artificial flavor, sodium bicarbonate. “How funny!” I said to my friend, pointing at the box. “You would predict chocolate or cocoa as the first ingredient of premium double chocolate brownies, yet actually it’s just sugar.”

Walking back to the Graham lounge kitchen, I wondered if these brownies would turn out sweeter or saltier. Although the first ingredient was sugar, it also contained salt and sodium bicarbonate, which should add a salty flavour, like the peanut butter did in batch one. We placed the box of brownie mix on the counter, and read the instructions on the back. Unlike the brownies from scratch we had made in the past weeks, this “recipe” only had three steps: (1) Preheat oven; (2) mix together water, oil, and eggs with the brownie mix; (3) bake.

Whereas both brownie batches made from scratch took about 45 minutes of preparation time, the box mix recipe only took us about 10 minutes. Though my learning curve in cooking contributed to some of the preparation time saved (and also the smoothness and simplicity of the recipe), we all agreed that having a pre made box mix gave us an enormous shortcut. I guess I grew accustomed to baking from scratch, because I felt slightly disappointed when putting the brownie tray in the oven. I felt like a cheater, and told my friend “That’s it? Are you sure we aren’t skipping any steps?”

Ding! My friend’s phone timer rang, and we excitedly opened the oven door. The crispy golden brown top of the brownie looked shockingly similar to the advertisement photograph. I poked a fork through the crisp outer shell and into the soft cake part of the brownie. It came out clean, so we carefully transferred the brownie tray onto the stovetop to cool. “Brownies are ready!” I called out to my floormates again, knocking on their doors as I jogged down the hall.

Once the brownies cooled, I carefully cut it into neat little squares, about a fourth of the serving piece in the advertisement picture on the box. Handing each of my friends and floormates a slice, we tried predicting whether these brownies would be sweet or savoury. Excluding two of my friends who adamantly argued the brownies would be as salty as the peanut butter batch (despite the fact that Double Chocolate Ghirardelli Brownies has absolutely no peanut butter inside), everyone including myself believed the brownies would taste as sweet as the super sugary and buttery brownies we had made for batch two.

“Three, two, one…” I bit into my steaming soft brownie square and slowly chewed, letting the chocolate melt on my tongue. Though it did not taste quite as salty as the peanut butter brownies that I loved, it also tasted less overwhelmingly sweet as batch two. My friends who shared my taste agreed, saying that they rated peanut butter brownies as the best, this shortcut batch of brownies as second best, and the extra sugar and butter batch as third. My floormates, most of whom had a sweet tooth, rated our different brownie batches in the exactly opposite order: super sugary and buttery brownies tasted best, the box mix tasted second best, and the peanut butter ones worst of the three.

After thinking about it, I considered the Double Chocolate Ghirardelli Brownie Mix company quite smart. By making their brownies both sweet and savoury, this enabled their product to appeal to both their sweet-toothed customers and also their salt-loving customers.

Blog Post 3: Sweet Or Salty?

In my last blog post, I tried my hand at baking for the first time. Although I cannot test how addictive the brownies taste compared to Batch One, since that would require me to bake brownies consistently for my dorm, I instead asked my floormates how they tasted in a general sense. Here are my results: Excited and proud of my culinary masterpiece, I took the steaming tray of brownies out of the oven and placed it on the stove to cool. With the scent of freshly baked peanut butter brownies filling the room, several of my floormates came out to investigate. Cutting the brownie brick into small bite-sized squares, I gave each person a piece. “Try one!” I said. “They’re for my English project.”

My friends, floormates, and I all bit into the brownies at the same time. I then asked everyone for their honest opinion of the brownies. Roughly half the group (mostly my friends) said they tasted perfect and loved the extra peanut butter flavor, and the other half (mostly my floormates) thought the peanut butter concealed the sugar taste and believed I should add more sugar to the brownies. Personally, I thought the brownies tasted perfect. But that may just be because I love peanut butter. Next I asked them, “Now that you ate a brownie, do you feel the urge to have a second helping? Or at least, more of an urge than before?” Most people stopped for a moment, thought about it, and replied something along the lines of “Actually, yes I do feel like having another. They’re so good! (Even if it could have been sweeter). Can I?” Handing them another brownie piece, I smiled. Remembering my research in my first blog post, which stated that a sign of physical craving is feeling an increased urge to have a food after just eating that food, I made a mental note that my floormates’ reactions to the brownies seemed similar to physical saving signs.

For my second batch of brownies, I wanted to try increasing the fat and sugar in hopes of appealing to the half of people who wished my first batch of brownies (the peanut butter ones) to be sweeter. Using the same recipe as before, I removed the extra scoops of peanut butter. Trying to maintain the same consistency as the original recipe, I doubled the amount of melted butter, tripled the sugar, and added several heaping spoonfuls of hot cocoa mix just for good measure. Mixing my toxic sugary solution in a bowl, I felt slightly guilty about the health and safety of all my floormates, especially considering all the research and warnings I have read about the dangers of sugar. Then again, how much harm can one single batch of extra sugary and fatty brownies do? At least I’m not baking brownies for my floormates every day, right?

Beep, beep! The timer beeped, and I removed my new and improved (though much unhealthier) batch of brownies from the oven. Placing the steaming tray on the stove to cool, I knocked on my floormates’ floor. “Batch two of brownies are ready!” I exclaimed. Again, I cut the brownies into bite sized squares. This time, the pieces were more clean cut because we remembered to spray the tray with cooking oil. Then again, the different ingredients may have also had an effect on the brownies’ ease of cutting and serving in individual squares. The additional butter might have given the brownies a smoother and more slippery, rich texture. Also, the first batch of brownies had peanut butter, which probably gave it a more sticky texture. As a result, the first batch of brownies kept sticking to the pan and knife whereas the second batch cut and separated cleanly.

Like before, my friends, floormates, and I counted down: “Three, two, one--” We bit into the brownies, savoring the taste while comparing it to the peanut butter brownie taste memory. Again, I asked them what their reactions were. This time, the half who originally believed the peanut butter brownies could use more sweeteners and fat absolutely loved my revised baked concoction. On the other hand, those who thought the peanut butter brownies were perfectly sweetened (like myself) found this batch two of brownies much too sugary. How does this make sense though? If sugar and fat make everything taste better, then why would a startling fifty percent of my floormates and friends prefer the less sugary, less fatty brownies with peanut butter. Then it hit me: Salt! Like junk food appeals to our taste buds either with its sugariness, such as donuts, or saltiness, such as potato chips. Both flavours appear equally appealing to our taste buds.

I suppose I already knew this, but now I know for certain: Mostly my friends (along with myself) prefer salty, whereas mostly my floormates prefered sweet. To confirm this observation, we discussed our favourite dessert foods. Sure enough, my friends and I enjoyed a midnight snack of chips, salsa, and perhaps a plate of cheese, crackers, and salami for special occasions. On the other hand, my floormates loved a midnight snack of cookies, cake, and several packs of gushers.

Blog Post 2: Learning To Cook

After researching how sugar and fat can be addicting, I decided to make brownies from scratch. Having never made brownies before, I decided to simply look up a recipe and pretend it was a chemistry lab experiment. There were many different online recipes, so I finally settled on one that was made from scratch and included peanut butter. What could go wrong when there’s peanut butter? I figured this would be a great control recipe to compare with my sweeter version in the next blog post because peanut butter is more salty and should somewhat hide the sweet taste.

Step 1: Getting all the right ingredients. Since my dorm food consisted only of cereal and almonds, I decided to use my meal points and get as many ingredients as I could from the cellar. Unfortunately the cellar does not have a diverse selection of cooking materials; instead, there were plenty of various cookie and brownie pre-made mixes. Gluten free, dairy free, peanut free -- all except for the nothing-free mixes, which were all out. I settled for a bag of white sugar, brown sugar, all purpose flour, and jar of peanut butter. I also added two small shakers filled with salt and pepper to my basket just in case I needed some extra seasoning. There wasn’t any butter, but I found a tub of margarine which would act as a good replacement. After all, fat is fat, right? I scanned the cold section for eggs, but could not find any for some reason. Remembering having seen eggs at the cellar before, I asked the clerk for a carton but unfortunately he said they would not come until the following day. Oh well, I thought. I suppose I already had to get the rest of the ingredients from Safeway, so I will just add eggs to the shopping list.

Step 1.5: Getting extra ingredients not provided by the cellar. After dropping off the cellar ingredients in the Graham kitchen, I headed off to Safeway. Passing through the aisles and aisles of canned and boxed food, I found vanilla extract and semi sweet chocolate chips for baking. Moving on to the refrigerated shelves, I grabbed a small carton of eggs and headed towards the checkout line.

Step 1.75: Oops! I forgot something! As I waited in line to pay, I suddenly remembered that I had nothing to measure ingredients with. Dumping my backpack into my friend’s arms, I raced to the baking aisle and picked up the most affordable set of cups and table/teaspoons. Glancing around one last time to make sure I had everything, I jumped back in line and paid for my basket of materials.

Step 2: Washing dishes? When I got back to the Graham kitchen on my floor, I eagerly began opening all of the ingredients when my friend suddenly stopped me. “Hold on!” he exclaimed. “What are you going to mix everything in? This place is a mess.” Looking around at the piles of dirty dishes cluttered all over the community sink, I realized he was right. So there we were, washing and drying dishes even before the cooking part began.

Step 3: The art of cracking eggs. After washing a large mixing bowl, along with several other miscellaneous dishes that we thought we may need but did not end up using, it was finally time to do some real cooking. Excitedly, I smashed eggs one at a time against the counter, then quickly held it over the bowl. Although I saw my friend shake his head at my unprofessional egg-breaking style, I just kept staring at the cold and gooey egg slime that dripped through my fingers into the bowl. There is something extremely satisfying about hearing eggs crack and plop into a bowl, even if there may be a handful of eggshell bits scattered inside as well.

Step 4: Is it resourcefulness, or just simply laziness? The next ingredient to add was melted butter, but unfortunately it came in a plastic container that was not microwave safe. Also, we needed a way to measure a cup of melted butter without melting my measuring cups. Ideally, a glass measuring beaker would be able to hold butter and be microwaved until there was enough for the recipe, but we did not have one. Safeway is only a block away, but walking all the way back to buy a glass measuring beaker seemed unnecessary; there just had to be a better way. Suddenly, my friend had an idea. Pointing to a small glass cup on the far end of the sink, he said “Wash that.” Confused, I took the cup and began washing. The cup was pretty, decorated with colourful horizontal bands and a few zigzag patterns, but it certainly was not a measuring cup. When I finished scrubbing, my friend measured a cup of water, poured it into the cup, checked the water line, and then dumped the water into the sink. “There,” he said. “Now we have a measuring cup.” Scooping butter into the cup, he filled it roughly a third above the horizontal line marking one cup. I placed the makeshift glass measuring beaker with butter into the microwave, and set it for two minutes. Coincidentally, we scooped exactly the right amount of butter on the first try.

Step 5: Mixing, measuring, and more mixing. The rest of the brownie preparation went fairly smoothly. After mixing the eggs and butter, I measured the dry ingredients into the bowl and then mixed some more. Microwaving a bowl of chocolate chips, we added it with all the other bowl contents and stirred until the clumpy pile turned into a smooth frosting-like mixture. Lastly, my friend added a generous spoonful or two of peanut butter, which made interesting swirling patterns as I mixed. When all the peanut butter spirals disappeared, I added chocolate chips.

Step 6: Baking time! Finally the ingredients were ready to be cooked. I forgot to get cooking oil from the cellar, so we just poured the mixture directly into a tray. Oh well, I thought. The brownies may stick to the tray, but at least they’ll still taste the same.

Step 7: Yum… Though actually I tried the brownies before they were baked. Hopefully the eggs didn’t have salmonella.

Blog Post 1: Craving Sweets

Craving Sweets

Have you ever seen a Cosco cheesecake advertisement on television and felt your mouth water? Imagine that feeling, but with the same to-die-for sensation as the urge for drugs or cigarettes. I recently read “Physical Craving and Food Addiction”, a scientific review paper written by Mark Cheren, Mary Foushi, Ester Helga Gudmundsdotter, Colleen Hillock, Marty Lerner, Michael Prager, Mary Rice, Louisa Walsh, and Philip Werdell. According to the research recorded in this journal, binge eating and consuming sugary substances  may have the same addicting effects on the brain as drugs and alcohol do.

In measuring addictions, Wilson defines physical craving as a sensation much different than simply hunger because the person feels an increased need for food having just eaten, which contradicts the expected feeling of being full after eating a meal. Hoebel expands on this definition by organizing it into three characteristics: (1) An animal used to be rewarded for a certain behavior but still continues that behavior even though there is no longer any reward; (2) After consuming a substance over time, the animal’s appetite and desire for it increases; (3) When a substance is taken away from that animal for a period of time, the animal will take more of the substance than before the period of withdrawal.

During animal testing, Hoebel observed for these three traits of physical craving and found that the laboratory animals given sugar versus those given alcohol and narcotics  shared the same results: (1) The animals continued behaving in ways that previously rewarded them with the substance, even though that reward no longer existed; (2) Over time, the animals needed increasing amounts of the substance to feel satisfied; (3) When the substance was returned to the animals after a period of deprivation, the animals consumed more than they had before deprivation. Furthermore, animals continued craving sugar in the face of punishment, which strengthens the conclusion that sugar can cause physical cravings that may affect brain pathways. Ahmed repeated these laboratory experiments with various substances, and found that even the rats addicted to cocaine preferred sugar and sweetness over drugs.

Researchers looking at human brain imaging observed that dopamine areas in the brain changed due to food binging, which causes an increased appetite and need for the food. In fact, Wang discovered that pictures of food trigger the dopamine areas of food bingers to light up. This reflects the same brain response as when drug addicts see drugs, or even think about drugs.

From a biological perspective, craving occurs when the body produces opioids, which are chemically similar to those found in addictive narcotics such as heroin and morphine. Because opioids are produced through the pattern of sugar/fat  consumption, deprivation, and more sugar/fat consumption, binge eating can create an addiction to certain foods because it mirrors this pattern. As a result, the opioids produced by the body from binge consumption of sugar and fat may affect the brain’s dopamine receptor areas in the same way that morphine and heroin opioids do.

To test the idea that opioids cause physical craving for sugar, Drewnowski experimented with naloxone, an opioid blocker that allows drug and alcohol addicts to feel no craving for their substance. In the experiment, two groups of students were given sweets and their eating patterns were observed. Then one group of students were given naloxone. The group of students who were not given naloxone continued eating the offered sweets, whereas the group given naloxone showed no interest in eating sweets all of a sudden. This shows a relationship between sugar and opioids because the naloxone was able to block physical craving for sweets, just as it has past been proven to block craving for heroin and morphine.

Aside from dopamine, another chemical released by the body that causes addictions is serotonin. Unlike dopamine, which causes addiction by making people feel happy, serotonin is a pain reducing chemical. Processed foods can trigger the body to release serotonin because the insulin used in digestion lowers blood sugar levels. Meanwhile the amino acid tryptophan can travel to the brain, creating a reaction with serotonin.

Overall, it looks as though sugar is just as addicting as other drugs from both an internal level with the opioids, but also on an external level with the animal observations that prove sugar may create physical craving. By looking at the human brain scans of the dopamine area, people addicted to sugar have the same effects as those addicted to other drugs. The reason behind this is that our body creates opioids if we binge eat sugar and replicate the pattern of consuming, depriving, and then consuming again.

Now that I understand the biological effects of fat and sugar on the brain, I plan to experiment with different recipes of brownies and altering the recipe to see which one tastes best to people.

Bibliography

Cheren, Mark, Mary Foushi, Ester H. Gudmundsdotter, Colleen Hillock, Marty Lerner, Michael Prager, Mary Rice, Louisa Walsh, and Philip Werdell. "Physical Craving and Food Addiction." Physical Craving and Food Addiction (2009): n. pag. The Food Addiction Institute PO Box 50126, Sarasota, FL 34232. Web. 22 Jan. 2015. <http://foodaddictioninstitute.org/FAI-DOCS/Physical-Craving-and-Food-Addiction.pdf>.

Welcome To My Blog!

Welcome to my blog, Cooking Up Junk Food. I decided to both research food addictions and then make my own versions of junk food. I hope my research and experimentations with cooking junk food will be both interesting and inspiring.