American scientists have revealed the secret of the special love some people to sweet foods.
As it turned out, for the transformation of man into the sweet tooth meets a special hormone called FGF21, which is synthesized in the liver and into the blood, affects the perception of taste in the brain. Their discovery, the experts said in the article published by “Cell Metabolism”.
According to the leaders of the research team Mr Stephen cleaver (University of Texas), the existence of such active ingredient, scientists knew before. But still it was not associated with a reaction to sweet foods, only noting its relationship to insulin. “The liver starts to produce FGF21 in response to increased glucose levels in the body. To start the synthesis enough that he exceeded a certain threshold level. Once in the brain, the hormone acts as a toggle increased appetite for sweets”, – said the expert, adding that his assumption his team checked in experiments on rodents.
Experiments have shown that mice with a lack of FGF21 was transformed into a voracious sweet tooth, while their “normal” relatives did not pay much attention to sweets. A similar result was obtained in experiments on monkeys.
